


Cinder and Smoke

by infamouslastwords



Series: Poison Arrow [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Animal Death, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Daryl Dixon-centric, Gore, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Past Lori Grimes/Rick Grimes, Past Rick Grimes/Shane Walsh, Polyamorous Rick Grimes, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Canon, Pre-Season/Series 03, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes, Slurs, Unacknowledged Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:09:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28073739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infamouslastwords/pseuds/infamouslastwords
Summary: “Is this normal?” he asks the other man, his voice tapering out into the infinite emptiness of the roof and the town alike. He waits for the answer to come, his whole body on tenterhooks.Rick’s breath floats out in a cloud. “Normal?” the other man questions. “Nothin’ is normal, anymore, brother.”A series of Daryl-centric standalone flashbacks from between the end of Season 2 and beginning of Season 3, the fall/winter before the prison. Lots of Rick & Daryl friendship (unacknowledged feelings / slow build), and Daryl & Carol platonic friendship. Last chapter has pre-change / pre-canon musings.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon & Carol Peletier, Daryl Dixon & Rick Grimes, Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes, Lori Grimes/Rick Grimes/Shane Walsh
Series: Poison Arrow [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031406
Comments: 22
Kudos: 34





	1. Storage Units

The building in front of them, full of storage units, is seven stories tall and made completely of concrete.

It is puzzling that the small town has such a building, Daryl thinks—he guesses they are close to a city: either Newnan, or LaGrange.

Night is falling fast, in winter. Shelter is needed, imminently, and Daryl knows that Rick knows this. That is why the man gives the building a second, a third glance as they pass by its perimeter, stealth-like. Their bags are full of loot from a nearby shopping center—full of food. Food is something they haven’t had in such a quantity for weeks, now.

Rick whistles a short melody, a sound that Merle and Daryl had used while hunting; that Daryl had shown to Rick. They have used the sounds the whole winter, so far, during its daily demands of clearing. Daryl jogs over, huddles up, his bow drawn taut under his woolen poncho.

“Yeah?” he whispers. Rick shifts his head, motioning toward the building.

“What you think?”

Daryl gives it a once-over, then looks hastily around them. The parking lot is empty, but they are essentially in an alley and the other side is yet unsecured.

“Likely only a few undead rent-a-cops,” Daryl responds. “Who hangs out in a storage unit?”

Rick nods. “That’s what I was thinkin’.”

“It’s tall.” Daryl cranes his neck. “It’s got a fire escape.”

“Yeah?”

They decide it just like this. They take the proper formation, turn corners with the proper cover, using flashlights to illuminate the pitch-black halls, and secure the doors behind them with lengths of baling wire. Daryl flanks Rick’s movements, and they complete their journey through the halls without speaking to one another, communicating only with signals, glances, subtle ripples through the musculature of their faces and fingers. The group follows behind, follows the plan, and Daryl cannot believe their luck in not encountering a single walker.

Until the freight elevator. He pulls his fist up at a right angle from the elbow, and Rick stops short behind him. In the edge of his flashlight beam there is a twitching hand against the floor, and a low snuffling meets his ears. He positions his bow, creeping closer, knees bent, with all muscles tensed and ready to fight.

The other hand is holding a gun.

Rick is next to him, slowly lowering his weapon, as he takes in the scene. Half of a walker is outside the opening of the freight, snarling, cut off at the waist. No legs are anywhere in sight.

Daryl inches forward to kick the gun out of the hand, and it skids a few feet to the left of where they all stand, grouped in an outward-facing circle.

“What is it?” Carol whispers, whipping her head around to catch a glance before turning back to the hallway from whence they came.

“Teenager,” Daryl mutters. “Used to be.” He moves his gaze up to meet Rick’s, then aims with his bow directly at the walker’s head. He looses an arrow. The snarling stops, and silence falls on them once again.

The elevator is old, all metal scaffolding inside the enclosure. Daryl and Rick stand on opposite sides of its opening, ushering the rest of the group into its confines while watching the perimeter. Once inside, Daryl yanks the manual metal gate shut and, on reflex, tries to pull the lever that would signal the elevator hydraulics to rise. Nothing happens.

Rick shoots him a look that he meets. It is equal to the question of, _What do we do now?_

“We could look for stairs,” Carl suggests after a beat from beside Lori. Daryl looks from him to Rick, sees those same blue eyes.

But Rick is shaking his head. “Seven floors—it’s too risky. No way out if we get jammed from above and below.”

Daryl looks around the cut-out walls, then clocks an emergency rope and pulley system behind Glenn and Maggie. He motions for them to step aside, then yanks on the rope. He flashes his gaze over to Rick.

“It’s good?” Rick asks, stepping over to check. Those tapered fingers, dirt-covered, wrap around the thick rope between Daryl’s own. He and Rick use their whole bodies as leverage against it as they pull down, and there is a slight, sudden shift to the platform under their feet. Daryl resists whooping.

“All right,” he says, triumphant, quiet. He readjusts his hands’ grip in line with Rick’s, nodding to set the rhythm to which they will make this work. Rick picks up the suggestion, nodding along, and then all at once they pull mightily, in tandem. The elevator groans, shifts violently, raising a few inches away from the first floor.

Glenn hurriedly steps forward to pull up the slack before it clunks down again, then Maggie joins, and Carol. Eventually they have five pairs of hands pulling at the rope, a finely oiled machine, that lifts them from the second floor to the third floor.

All five of them are sweating, now, as they pass the sixth floor. “Just one more,” Rick grunts, grinding his teeth with the effort. Every floor they have passed has been empty, totally empty. Lori shines her flashlight into each one as they pass by, but nothing is there. A ghostly emptiness.

They reach the seventh floor, finally, and Carl races forward to pull the metal grate open inside the enclosure. Next, the metal grate blocking access to the floor. Beth maneuvers out of the lift, her gun drawn, with Hershel close behind. Lori goes next, and Carl.

“How’re we gonna do this?” Glenn asks. He tils his head at a mangled piece of metal hanging from the side of the elevator. “The cinch is broken.”

“Probably how that boy died,” Lori says, her voice dark.

Daryl shoots a look at Rick. They must let go of the rope in order to exit. But letting go of the rope means a free-fall back to the ground floor. Rick’s face is shining with sweat.

“Knot it, Daryl,” the other man grunts, his whole body a counterweight. “A butterfly knot,” he directs.

Daryl grits his teeth and tries to pull some slack toward him, but it is difficult. He manages a few inches, but the weight is too much.

“Get off,” Rick orders, tersely. “Glenn, Maggie. Get off. The less on, the better.”

The others oblige, carefully moving toward the exit, and Daryl groans as the lift attempts to obey the laws of gravity. The slacked rope rushes through his palms for a moment, burning, until Glenn and Maggie hop off.

“Hold it!” Rick demands, his own efforts starkly apparent in his thighs straining against his jeans. He is bracing his boots against the floor, and Carol is, too. Daryl lets out an anxious laugh, trying again to gain a length of slack. It is a little easier, now, but still too difficult to get enough to do anything with.

“Carol,” Rick bites after watching Daryl struggle with the rope. “Go.”

The moment Carol steps off the lift, Rick uses all his might to pull the elevator higher via the rope, hands grasping desperately, to give Daryl a bit more to tie.

Daryl hears him cry out against the effort of it. He manages to yank down half a foot, manages to push his four fingers through, holding the rest of the rope in his palm. The lift shudders and shifts, and he hears Rick’s shout of otherworldly exertion.

“C’mon!” the other yells.

Daryl tightens the loop from the other side, sliding his hand out of the vice, and lets gravity do the rest. The lift shudders, shakes, held tight by the knot, at a slight angle. He and Rick leap off the platform before anything else can happen—but the lift stays, suspended, as if by a miracle.

Daryl whoops hoarsely, collecting his breath with his hands on his knees.

“Y’all,” Beth calls. Some of the others had moved ahead, making sure to secure the immediate area. On the outer edge of Hershel’s flashlight’s illumination, Beth turns back to address the group.

“Somethin’ stinks,” she says, anxiously.

Knowing what that has meant in the past, all of them raise their weapons high. The silence that falls while they all listen for walker groans is tense, heavy. Nothing makes a sound as they pass through aisle after aisle of closeted metal doors and units, the concrete seemingly endless. The stench intensifies the deeper they push into the floor, but no sound comes to their ears except for the soft shuffling of so many of their pairs of feet.

Rick is on one side of the group, insulating, in formation, and Daryl, on the other side, has got his flashlight in his mouth, between his teeth, his crossbow balanced on his bicep and cradled close to his cheek. Something enters the circle of his light, and he sees a foot, an ankle. He makes another hunting call in his throat and, instantly, Rick is by his side. They stare as more feet, legs are illuminated. All in a row, they are, lying down on their backs and immobile with their arms folded inelegantly against their chests. Lori gasps sharply behind them as the whole scene comes into view.

A group of eight people, all with gunshot wounds to the head.

“Suicide?” Daryl breathes. He sees Lori cover Carl’s face with her hand, turn her own gaze away. Rick’s jaw is set, the muscle in his cheek jumping starkly.

“Assisted,” the man replies, clearly finding this scene hard to digest.

“But not executed,” Daryl adds. He is the only one to inch closer, leaning down, before pulling his poncho tight over his nose. “They’re pretty fresh.”

“We can smell that,” Beth replies, a bit of rattled flippancy in the tone. Hershel has his arm wrapped around her shoulders and pulls her closer to him. His kind face is set sadly, sternly.

Carl moves his mother’s hands from his face, pushing forward. “They’re all dead, for sure?”

Rick nods at his son, and Daryl knows the other man can only watch as his son witnesses this harrowing scene that has been left for them, and cannot protect him from it at all. “They’re gone.”

Carol is on the outskirts, picking carefully into an open unit. “They were camping here for a little while,” she observes out loud. She turns toward Daryl, looks at him and Rick. “That boy at the bottom… he must’ve…”

“Ended it for them,” Carl finishes for her, a defiant expression on his face. Daryl looks at the boy’s blue eyes, those eyes that are hard and staring into his father’s, and feels his heart clench with some kind of grief. He wonders how much innocence he can see leave the boy’s body before it breaks him.

Rick reaches out to his son, but Carl avoids the touch. Lori, in the background, is cradling her pregnant stomach and staring daggers at Rick in lieu of processing the profound anguish of the scene. And, honestly, Daryl cannot blame her for wanting to blame something.

However, Rick tactfully avoids the gaze. Instead, he is locking eyes with Daryl.

“Let’s clear ‘em.” Rick then turns, more so addressing the group. “We’ll stay here for the night.”

He and Rick find a mostly empty unit far enough away, and begin to drag the corpses toward its dark maw. The others are sitting in a circle a way off, holed up with some found blankets to combat the stark cold that the concrete structure offers, permeates. They are eating from the stash uncovered at the strip mall, chatting quietly amongst themselves in the glow of a few camping lanterns.

“This fuckin’ smells,” Daryl comments, his hands wrapped around the ankles of the man they’re carrying. He has his shirt collar pulled up over his nose, and Rick has done the same. It isn’t enough, though, to keep the decay of death away from their nostrils. “Dunno how they’re eatin’ right now.”

Rick grunts with the effort of swinging the body into the pile they have created in the corner of the unit. He stoops for a moment, eyes flashing to Daryl’s.

“Well—they’re hungry. Can you blame ‘em?”

Daryl shrugs, begins walking back down the aisle with Rick to where the last two corpses lay.

“Careful, this one’s juicy,” Daryl comments as he, once again, secures his hands around the ankles while Rick takes the upper arms in his grip. The bodies have only just set into rigor, meaning that this ten-year-old child they’re carrying now was taking breaths on this earth less than one day ago.

 _The boy had trouble shooting her_ , Daryl sees. The gun work is sloppy and exhibits some blatant signs of hesitancy.

Rick grimaces in response, moving his eyes toward their goal of the unit down the way.

“She’s gonna lose stuff,” Daryl mutters, trying to adjust his grip, trying to keep his voice quiet so it does not carry to where the group is sitting, down the aisle. “They shoulda gone a row over,” he comments, wanting to hide this.

Rick doesn’t say anything, his mouth set in a harsh line, mental faculties clearly focused on the task at hand. He enters the unit first, Daryl following, before there is a great metallic crash and Daryl feels the other end of the body give out and hit the ground with a wet thump.

“You good?” he asks with some urgency, shining his flashlight into the unit. He finds Rick on the floor, wincing and clutching his side next to a metal bedframe. His boot sole is covered in viscera from the little girl’s spilt-over upper half.

Rick’s mouth is contorted, one eye closed with pain as he looks up into Daryl’s flashlight beam. “You were right,” he says. “Fuckin’ juicy.”

Daryl reaches down, helping Rick back onto his feet. Rick leans his hip unsteadily against the small ledge the edge of the bedframe offers, breathing heavily. “Just my ribs,” Rick informs him. “Hit ‘em against the frame.”

“Want me to get Hershel?”

Rick shakes his head firmly. “No. No—Lori. She doesn’t want me around for right now. Not even as a footnote in a conversation.”

Daryl accepts this, but at the same time wonders exactly how Rick thinks about the situation. As far as he can tell, Lori hasn’t wanted him around since the night of the farm. But he keeps his mouth shut. That kind of truth is antagonism, and it won’t help them one bit right now.

“Wait here? I’ll grab the last one.”

Rick’s face is pale and closed off from the pain of the fall. He doesn’t respond. Daryl takes initiative and strides to the last body, dragging it by its ankles against the concrete floor, back to the unit where Rick is crouched just outside, protective over himself like a wounded animal. Daryl reaches up to the accordion pleated aluminum door and forces it down, lets it slide to hit the floor with a bang. He doesn’t give the corpses a last look, and is grateful that they are finally out of sight.

“Seen a way outta here?” Rick asks weakly. “Could use some fresh air.”

Daryl responds, “Door out to the roof.”

Rick looks up at him, gaze still squinted. “Take me?”

Daryl swallows, then nods.

Rick holds tight to him, leveraged against his shoulder, as he brings both their bodies up the half-flight of stairs to the roof. Rick has given him his Python, just in case there is something waiting for them up there. His finger jumps next to the trigger, now, wary and waiting.

The clean, bracing wind is the first thing that Daryl feels, pushing open the door to access the roof. He feels Rick recoil as well, the cold sharp and stunning against their relatively sheltered warmth.

"Fuck,” Rick swears feebly, clutching closer to Daryl’s side as they ascend and depart from under the lintel of the stairwell. It is fully night, now, and the darkness is all-encompassing except for the light filtering down from a crescent moon. But—fresh air. So incredibly fresh. He knows Rick can smell it, too, rejoices in its icy embrace.

After ensuring it is safe, Daryl searches for a ledge to set Rick down on and leads him across the empty roof. The other man makes his own journey in the last few steps. They sit next to one another, throwing their legs over the edge of the building, perched on its stony ridge. Their feet dangle out into ink-black air. Rick has his flannel on, and his two-tone canvas jacket, but that isn’t much protection against the deep January winter that surrounds and blows past them, now.

The small chill that runs through Rick’s body catches Daryl’s attention. He pulls the edge of his poncho up, drapes it like a woolen wing over his own arm. Rick looks at the material offered and he scoots closer to Daryl, seeking warmth, seeking the comfort so freely presented. He folds his shoulder into the crook of Daryl’s body, pressing deeper into the heat there. Daryl briefly thinks about Merle, thinks about what his brother would say upon witnessing this scene—nothing good, probably. He pushes the thoughts out of his mind. Because it is a normal type of behavior, now: Normal to share heat, to share space, to share food, to share knowledge, to share everything. That is what survival means. That is what being accepted into, being a part of the group means.

“What if the elevator goes down?” Rick asks, his voice faint in Daryl’s right ear. He shrugs.

“We have the stairs, then. Glenn locked ‘em up with baling wire on the floor we’re on, but we can open ‘em back up. Will be easier, safer now that we’re on the top and not the bottom.”

Rick hums. Daryl tries to think about strategy, like he knows the other man is thinking about strategy. What will keep them all safe, he wonders. What steps can they take now, to prevent disaster later?

“We could reenforce the rope. It was hard tyin’ it, but I could go back with some stronger stuff to make sure the elevator is an option if we need it.”

Rick breathes steadily against him, albeit shallowly. “Maybe.”

Daryl nods, trying not to jostle the other man with his movements. The town below is quiet, so incredibly quiet, that this place, this moment, feels like unreality to Daryl.

“No, that’d put you in danger,” Rick rethinks. “It could fall while you’re on it.”

“That’s fine,” Daryl tries, but knows in his gut that this is just like all their other shelters: some glaring faults, only as good as they can find, finally, to get a few hours of sleep during the darkest hours of the night. But not good for forever. They cannot stay there forever.

“No. It ain’t.”

Daryl is surprised by the edge in the other man’s voice. He shifts his gaze toward Rick, meeting wary blue eyes.

“We’ll use the fire escape,” Rick decides. “We should make sure to tie the door behind us on the way back, though. Someone could climb up durin’ the night.”

Daryl takes a deep breath in, nods once. A comfortable silence falls between them for a few moments, and Daryl’s eyes wander over the town illuminated below.

“We’re always planning,” Rick states, sudden. He pauses a beat, letting the statement sink in. “You ever think ‘bout that? We never just talk like people, anymore” he continues. “Like, ‘Hey, how are you?’ Its always somethin’ about tactics. Somethin’ about food.”

Daryl doesn’t know what to say. “That ain’t how people talk?” he asks.

Rick starts laughing, but the sound is weak and he is soon clutching his side. Daryl’s thoughts skip at the realization that Rick may be truly wounded. After it all, just from a bed frame and some guts.

“Lemme look at ya,” he insists, worry edging his tone.

Rick shakes his head. “Hershel can, later. Don’t wanna go back down there ri’ now.”

Daryl squints, his brow furrowing.

“It’s okay for now,” Rick assures him with a sideways glance. But Daryl doesn’t look away, doesn’t say anything with his words. Stares him into submission.

Rick sighs. “Fine,” he agrees, moving to lift his shirt out of where it is tucked into his belt. Daryl reaches into his pocket, pulls out his flashlight. He holds it in his mouth, running his fingertips over Rick’s stark ribs as the other man shivers.

“Cold?” Daryl murmurs, taking the flashlight out of his mouth and clicking it off. He hadn’t realized how wan Rick had become, how often he handed food to Carl and Lori before taking any for himself.

Rick’s gentle breaths make small clouds into the dark of the night between them. The other man covers up again, shrugging closer to Daryl. “Yes,” he replies. His teeth are chattering softly. “What’s the diagnosis, doctor?”

Daryl snorts. “Bad bruising. If we have some spare gauze, you’ll wanna wrap it. Maybe put some’a Carol’s arnica on it. But, you’ll live.” He leans back, placing a hand against the stony ledge underneath them. This effectively places his arm around Rick’s back at a diagonal, and smally, the other man settles back into it. “Still, you should ask Hershel to take a look,” Daryl chuckles. Rick laughs but clutches his side again, his spine arching firmly into the crook of Daryl’s arm.

An unfamiliar tension raises in Daryl’s chest. “Baby’s gettin’ big,” he comments quickly, referring to the size of Lori’s stomach. He thinks about pulling his arm away in his awkwardness, but knows that would be strange. “How much longer?”

Rick hums. “Jus’ a bit more than two months.”

Daryl nods. “We should start collectin’, y’know—like clothes. Carol and me can sew things up if we get—”

"If you’re gonna start plannin’ again,” Rick speaks loudly over him, forcing him into silence, “you should just go.” The words are terse, and Daryl knows Rick is on edge. He knows he isn’t helping with that, and he just wants to help.

“Just thinkin’ out loud,” Daryl assents.

“Think more quietly, then,” Rick replies. Rick is staring at him when he looks over. Daryl sees the hardness there melt as they stare, expression illuminated underneath the half-moon’s yellow light. “Please,” Rick adds, softly.

“Yeah,” Daryl murmurs. “You got it.” He rips his gaze away and turns his face up toward the sky, exposing his throat to the cold air, the cold wind whistling by at such great heights. He thinks of saying something, something that is funny to him, and he laughs lightly to himself.

Rick snorts, pulling closer the folds of the poncho that have fallen from him with Daryl’s erratic movements. Rick’s sharp elbow jostles him, like a friend who wants to be in on a joke. “What?”

Daryl turns back to Rick, a small smirk playing at one corner of his mouth. “Hey, how are you?” he mimics, then bursts into outright laughter. The sound rings out against the empty town, the night air. Rick’s mouth pulls apart into a grin; it grows full, boyish, and indulgent. Its brightness can almost erase the night, erase what they had to witness and clean up one floor below them.

“Okay, asshole,” Rick responds, still smiling as Daryl carries on laughing. “You got me.”

Daryl finally quiets, sees the ghost of a laugh remain on Rick’s face as the other man shakes his head. Rick sighs.

“Really, though,” Daryl ventures. “Talk to me.”

After a beat, Rick furrows his brow. He places a palm on his knee, rubbing absently as he sinks into his mind to form that connection between thoughts and words. Daryl sees this all play out, plain as day, across Rick’s face. He hasn’t completely gotten used to it, yet, this sixth sense he has for the other man’s emotions, and feels almost like he is invading Rick’s privacy by picking up on the atmosphere around him, like this. But—sharing is caring, right?

Rick finally whispers, “There were nine of ‘em.” Daryl almost doesn’t catch it. “Just like us.”

The thought had crossed his mind, yes, pulling those bodies into the dark, into their forever dark, but he doesn’t let himself indulge those thoughts for too long or else it happens. A line is crossed that cannot be uncrossed. And Daryl cannot end up where they were. Cannot let Rick.

“Have you eaten today?” Daryl asks.

Rick runs a palm over his face, looks away. “No.”

Daryl reaches into his pocket and rummages, pulls out the metallic wrapper of a protein bar. “Here,” he offers, holding it out for the other man. “I put the rest in the bag down there, but I kept one on me. Take it.”

Rick shakes his head without looking at what is being offered to him. “You have it.”

“There’s plenty, Rick. I know we ain’t used to that an’ all…” Daryl trails off. He understands Rick will not agree to eat it entire, so he rips open the package and pulls the bar in half. It is stale, and it does not want to separate. Daryl makes sure to hand the bigger piece to Rick. “Take it, man. C’mon. Before I force it down your throat.”

Rick reaches out, grasps his half out of Daryl’s fingertips, and takes a hesitant bite. It is as if his mouth no longer understands what it is supposed to do, and the slow movement of his jaw chewing is stunted, awkward; sorrowful.

Daryl bites at the smallest edge of his half, watching Rick carefully. He sees the other man bring the food to his mouth, pull off another piece with his teeth—sees the tears that start to roll down the other’s cheeks.

“What if…” Rick begins, swallowing, letting his hand fall to his thigh as the food that is grasped there is forgotten. “Would you…?”

“Hey,” Daryl urges, his voice low. “That ain’t never gonna happen.” Daryl stares, his eyes hard, until the other man lifts his gaze. “It ain’t.”

Rick’s breath shifts the other’s body against him, moves the folds of the poncho over their shoulders. Rick looks like he’ll disappear from his body, those eyes focusing and becoming unfocused. Daryl reaches around to his own back pocket, grabs his red bandana, brings it forward as if to wipe the other’s face.

“Your face is gonna freeze like that.”

This brings Rick back to himself. He quickly shoves the rest of the protein bar into his mouth, takes the red cloth from Daryl’s fingers and rubs it over his eyes: proving, sobering.

“It’d be better to secure the roof at the fire escape itself,” Rick mutters, handing the bandana back to Daryl. “Let’s do that before we go back in.”

The other man swings his legs over the ledge, firmly planting them back onto the rubber covering of the flat roof. Daryl jumps at the sudden change in demeanor, undecidedly pivoting from where he had sat to where he knows he should be following Rick—across the roof and to the fire escape scaffolding.

“Yo,” he calls. “Wait up.”

He jogs over and sees the man biting back a grimace, his palm laid flat over his bruised ribs, above the canvas jacket.

“Wanna let me handle this, man?”

Rick’s other arm flies out, plants itself firmly against Daryl’s chest, and stops him from coming any closer. The strength in it is stark, apparent—as is the hard look in the other man’s eyes.

“Y’know, I’ve got it,” Rick mutters. “Go check on the others.”

Daryl scoffs. “Yeah, right. I ain’t leavin’ you out here alone.”

Rick’s hand on his chest shoves—the gesture decisive—and Daryl stumbles backward.

“No,” the other man says, guttural. “Daryl—” The pause is gut-wrenching. “I have to.”

“Okay, Rick,” Daryl agrees. “I understand. Just, don’t push me out. Lemme help.”

Rick shifts his gaze warily, turning his back to Daryl. “Fuck you, thinking I need help,” the man bites. “C’mere.”

Daryl sets his jaw and makes his way over to the start of the fire escape, one step behind Rick. The other man’s shoulders sway in front of him as he makes a hesitant descent, one hand against his ribs as the other hand grasps tightly to the metal handrail. Daryl studies every silent signal those dark curls give off, and can almost picture the other man’s face gritted in pain, perseverance, and stubbornness. If one word, one sound left those lips he knows he would trip over himself to assist the other man. But it doesn’t. They continue on, held tight to the concrete on the outside of the building by the metal fire escape steps, but no sounds escape Rick’s mouth except for the ragged breaths exiting those lips.

Now at the bottom, Rick pulls the accordion-fold out ladder back up into its place, making an at least eight-foot leap for anyone trying to get up from below, Daryl realizes he is being quicker than necessary. He is just barely there, Rick silently refusing support when the other man needs it because of his ribs. Daryl secures the ladder with some baling wire, knots it impossibly tight. Something pushes violence into his movements, for him to do so, pushes him past his better judgement.

On the way back up, Daryl realizes they have not exchanged words for several minutes. He lets Rick lag behind—keeping an eye on him—yet surpassing, not assisting. He hops over the divider between fire escape and roof flat, maintaining himself upright and ready for any threat. He realizes they probably should have checked on the others, but something is drawing him close to Rick at the same time the mechanism inside him wants him to push away. Two opposing forces contained within his body.

“You good?” he calls down to the figure straggling on the metal stairs only a few feet below him. “Gonna make it?”

Rick grunts in response. Daryl throws an arm down, offering it to the temporarily disabled sheriff. Rick takes hold of the wrist with his palm, grasping tight at the same time that Daryl grasps Rick’s wrist. He pulls him up, helping Rick to vault over that last space between the metal scaffolding and the roof. The other man leans heavily into him for a moment before withdrawing, a wince crossing his fine features. Their hands separate after a few beats.

“Thanks,” Rick says gruffly. Daryl stands, rooted to the spot, before Rick takes a few steps back toward the door down to the interior units.

“Let’s go,” Rick orders when he realizes Daryl isn’t moving. His breaths escape him in a thin cloud, and he is illuminated only dimly by the moonlight, so far away. Daryl feels his breath hitch in his throat.

“Daryl.”

The cloud that bears his name floats away from Rick’s lips—Daryl watches it go, watches it dissipate, before his eyes refocus and he feels like he has been dropped back, heavily, into his body. His limbs feel foreign to him.

“Yeah, sorry. Comin’.”

Rick’s thin shoulders float in front of him in the darkness of the stairwell. Rick has his penlight out. Daryl’s blood rushes into his ears, making them feel stuffed with cotton—even his own breath is far away from him, the sound of it. He can’t bring his eyes off the crux of Rick’s shoulder blades, the hollow indent in the fabric of his tan jacket between them. Above them, the dark curls that disappear, inky, into the collar. Daryl wonders why his body is reacting this way—it is like the super-human instinct he is able to pick up when tracking, all his senses suddenly bright, finely keyed into observations. He’s not in the wild—he’s not searching for Rick. Rick is right here. So why does it feel like all facets of his mind are reaching their feelers out toward the other man, trying to glean something from his physicality as one would gnaw the bone for the last scrap of meat?

Daryl’s stomach growls. Rick turns his head slightly at the sound as they make their way back down the aisle where the rest of the group is set up. He looks like he might say something, his lips parting, but a light laugh from Beth makes its way to their ears, stopping the thought from coming to fruition. Rick’s eyes slip from his, casting their gaze down to the group.

Daryl rips his eyes away from Rick to look over at their group, too. Beth is leaning into Maggie, both of them with smiles playing across their faces. From across the circle Hershel is watching his two girls, his eyes sparkling in the light of the lanterns. Around them all are crumpled up wrappers, sideways cans, empty food packaging. They’re all full, happy. Lori has curled up with Carl on the edge, covered in blankets, both of them like cats softly snoozing. Daryl catches Rick’s expression when he sees this, sees something crumble away from the hard façade of the man next to him. That salt and pepper brow lightens, goes lax.

Rick feels Daryl staring, and when he meets his eyes something like confusion passes across his gentle face. Rick clears his throat.

“Make sure you get some food, brother.” That voice has returned to its relative softness; Rick is constantly oscillating between the two extremes, Daryl notes. Dictator and father.

“Mm-hm,” Daryl responds, matching that softness.

Rick’s pace speeds up and he makes a line for Hershel. Daryl lingers on the far side, taking a place on the floor next to Carol, who hands him a bottle of water. He acknowledges the gesture gently, throwing his attention frequently back toward Rick and Hershel as the older man takes a look at Rick’s ribs. Rick’s back is to him, so he only sees the half-spread wings of Rick’s arms, lifting his shirt, raised and bent at the elbow. Crooked. He notices Carol’s stare.

“Somethin’ happen?” she asks quietly, the question only loud enough to reach his ears. Daryl shoots her a look.

“He fell, moving the bodies.”

“He okay?”

Daryl sighs, cracking the screw top off the bottle of water and downing half of it in one breath. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Should be. Make him use the arnica, though, he might not ask.”

Carol looks from him to Rick, who is removing his jacket as Hershel unwraps a roll of white latticed gauze. “Got it.” Carol’s gaze shifts back to his face.

“What else is goin’ on, Pookie?” she asks gently.

Daryl rolls his eyes. “That, again?”

“Better get used to it,” Carol counters. “It’s my nickname for you, now.”

“Your first husband wasn’t no good, wouldn’t think you’d want a second one. Especially a fake second husband.” Daryl takes another sip of water but notices that Carol has gone quiet.

“Shit,” he says. “I’m sorry, Carol.”

Carol’s face darkens. She tilts her eyes up to Daryl’s. “Sorry enough to let me call you Pookie?”

Daryl pushes his shoulder into her, and she breaks the charade with a short laugh.

“Here, eat something,” she smiles, reaching into a nearby bag. She hands him a protein bar. “Is there anything you want?”

Daryl takes the bar in his fingers and holds it in his lap. He shakes his head. “Thanks.”

Carol’s smile deepens. “It’s not bad, huh?” she comments, gesturing generally at the structure. “Might be good for more than one night, considerin’ we got all this loot.”

Daryl hums in response, opening the wrapper of the protein bar. He brings a corner of it to his mouth, chewing. “No windows,” he says. “Can’t make a fire.”

Carol furrows her brow, thinking, then shrugs. “Better than nothing.”

“Carol,” Rick calls, and she turns her face as he approaches. His shirt is off, chest bare except for his mid-section, which is wrapped halfway up with gauze.

Rick holds Daryl in a long gaze, then shifts his eyes to Carol’s. “You got that arnica gel, still?”

Carol nods. “Sure do.”

“You mind lettin’ me use some? My ribs aren’t too good right now.”

“Yeah,” Carol agrees, moving to pull her bag toward her. She digs around in its depths and produces a white and green tube. “Here,” she says, placing it in Rick’s outstretched palm.

“Thank you,” Rick murmurs, giving Daryl a last look before departing. Daryl nods slightly in response, then brings his eyes to the floor. He worries at the laces tied around his ankles, fidgeting.

When he looks up, Carol is smirking at him.

“Wha’?” he asks, gruff. Carol shakes her head.

“Guess I don’t gotta make up an excuse to give that to him, now.”

Daryl scoffs, then nods. “A relief, if I ever saw one,” he jokes derisively.

Carol laughs but covers her mouth quickly. “Don’t be mean,” she chides, swatting him.

Daryl lets out a sigh, letting himself fall back against the floor of the hallway. He covers his smile with his hands, covers his face entire. He stretches his spine against the concrete, feeling the forgotten protein bar slip from his lap. He pours the last of the bottle of water over his face and rubs, sufficiently washing his skin. He watches the stars that splay out against the inside of his eyelids, all the whorls and scars of otherworldly color. Minutes pass.

“Bed,” he finally decides, speaking somewhat at Carol, who is leaning back against her arms. She looks over her shoulder as she speaks.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Daryl confirms. “Goodnight.” He picks himself off the floor, searching for his pack.

“Goodnight, Pookie,” Carol calls lightly after his retreating form. He flashes her a funny face, rounding the corner into relative privacy. Once there, he lets loose a rolled blanket from his pack against the air and smooths it out, kneeling. He throws himself down on its surface, closing his eyes as he pulls his poncho over his body. He doesn’t even bother to remove his boots. Then he is out, cold.

There are no windows, so he cannot be sure what time it is when he startles awake. A palm is over his mouth and he immediately reaches for his knife, but another hand grabs his wrist and impedes that movement, too.

“It’s Rick.”

Daryl unwinds his muscles, settling down as he registers the familiar drawl. His eyes adjust to the darkness and he sees Rick’s figure loom in the dimness above his own. The hand on his wrist lets go, then the palm removes itself from over his lips.

“What’s up?” he asks in a whisper, only a hint of residual sleep in the tone. He props himself up on his elbows.

“Nothin’,” the other man starts, crouching close. There is some hesitancy in his outline that Daryl can sense, and he rubs his eyes while he waits for the truth to come out.

“Well,” Rick adds. “You got any Morleys left from that last place?”

Daryl chuckles lightly. “Man, just raid my pack next time. Don’t gotta ask.”

Rick’s outline shifts, sways. “You wanna come out with me?”

Daryl stretches his legs against the blanket underneath him, wiggling his toes on the inside of his boots. “Wha’ time is it?” He sees Rick check his wrist and the watch strapped there.

“Just past four.”

Daryl groans quietly. “You slept at all?”

Rick doesn’t respond. Daryl begins to throw his poncho from his body, fastening it tight around his shoulders. “Gonna be cold as shit out there,” he warns. He sees Rick’s head’s silhouette nod in response.

Daryl scoops the blanket off the floor and rolls it between his hands, deciding it is better to take that out with them than to not have it. He also hikes his pack in its entirety onto his back, too sleep-logged to bother searching for his lighter and the cigarettes in the stark black that surrounds them.

Like the blind, he follows Rick’s sure movements toward the door out to the roof. They take another hallway toward the exit, making sure to avoid the sleeping forms of their group in order to not wake anyone. Again, all he can see is the outline of the other man’s shoulders in front of him, swaying with each footstep taken.

Out on the rooftop, the light from the half-moon makes everything seem impossibly bright. Daryl actually squints at first, his eyes in some mild pain until they become accustomed. He and Rick file over toward the ledge they had perched on earlier in the night, and Daryl unfurls the blanket in his grasp over both of their laps, lets it hang over the edge and out into the darkness of the space between where they roost and the distance down to the pavement. He produces the smokes and his zippo.

“Thanks for this,” Rick sighs, taking the first drag of the cigarette that Daryl lights. Daryl folds his hands back together, flipping the lid of the zippo closed as he watches.

“No problem,” he assents. He does not light one for himself, instead yawning and turning his face up toward the night sky. He breathes in deeply, then lets out a long sigh.

Rick nudges his upper arm with his elbow, holding the cigarette out for him to take. He does so, slipping the filter easily between his two fingers. He throws a look at Rick, the other man’s face now visible, as he inhales, smooth, and lets out a shaky exhale.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Daryl asks, innocuous. He takes in another lungful of the cigarette before holding it out for Rick.

“Yeah,” the other man assents. He fingers the filter thoughtfully, bringing it once again to his lips. “Hey,” he starts. “Are… are you and Carol—?”

Daryl snorts. He lets a heavy breath leave him. “Are me and Carol—what?” he asks.

Rick’s head shakes. He takes a long time to reply. “Sorry about this, but… are you two fuckin’?”

Daryl almost drops the cigarette out of surprise, trying to hand it back to Rick. “No,” he sputters, no embellishments coming to mind.

Rick breathes in another lungful of nicotine. “Okay,” he says, his voice strangled in a way. “I had wondered, since our hunting trip…”

Daryl rubs his face with his palm. “Carol’s my friend—my best friend.”

Rick takes a long look at him. “Good,” the other man agrees. “I believe you.”

Daryl cannot manage to right the rhythm of his breath. It comes in shaky and leaves just as unstably. Even the cigarette butt that Rick hands back to him holds no comfort—it dissipates before he is able to glean enough nicotine to stop his calloused hands’ shaking.

He ends up lighting another, fully aware that his every movement is under the watchful gaze of Rick’s blue eyes. Almost all at once, he knows Rick is shivering again.

“Did Hershel fix you up?” Daryl manages to ask. He can only imagine the wrapping underneath the other man’s flannel, fully set on banishing the view of him without a shirt out of his mind’s eye.

“Yeah,” comes the reply. “Fuck, it’s cold.”

“Let’s move,” Daryl suggests, taking initiative to pivot himself against the floor of the roof. He swings down, placing his back against the small retaining wall he had just been sitting on, pulling the blanket from Rick’s lap at the same time he offers it up for more coverage, more comfort—offers it if only Rick would move down with him, too.

And Rick does. The other man sidles familiarly into his open arm and he lays the blanket down across them. Rick’s arm moves the edge up and over his far shoulder, and Daryl settles deeply against Rick’s side underneath the welcome cover of the fabric.

“Is this normal?” he asks the other man, his voice tapering out into the infinite emptiness of the roof and the town alike. He waits for the answer to come, his whole body on tenterhooks.

Rick’s breath floats out in a cloud. “Normal?” the other man questions. “Nothin’ is normal, anymore, brother.”

Daryl’s breath is still held taught within the confines of his body. He sucks shallowly at the filter of the Morley.

“I jus’ mean…” Daryl starts. “I mean… Is it okay, bein’ like this? With each other?”

This question gives Rick some pause. “What’re you thinkin’ about?” the other man asks.

“Merle,” Daryl admits. The name rolls heavy off his lips, carries with it years and years of denial, of phobia. Of internalized hatred.

Rick shifts gently against him. “And what is Merle sayin’, now?” he asks, the question impossibly gentle against the blank slate of the navy sky.

“He’s saying…” Daryl swallows around his thick tongue. “He’s sayin’ I’m a fag.”

Rick inhales sharply at this word. “Did Merle say this word a lot, before—?”

Daryl doesn’t dare answer with a sentence. Instead, he substitutes a nod, definitive.

He hears Rick sigh. It is a sound full of sorrow.

“You shouldn’t…” the reply comes. “Shouldn’t listen.”

Daryl shrugs. “I know who I am,” he responds. “I know… even if who I am is ugly.”

He sees Rick’s jaw set, clamped shut. The other man brings the cigarette to his lips, sucking deeply while he searches for something to say.

“Not ugly,” comes the voice at last. “Far… far from ugly.”

On the roof, Daryl cannot stop feeling the heat radiating from Rick’s thigh resting against his own, promising something like dawn.

“You’re…” Rick trails off. There is no need for pretense; there is no need for explanation. “Daryl,” the voice comes at last. “Just Daryl.” And somehow it is different—somehow it is enough.

He sinks back into the sound of it reverberating off the empty air between them. He listens to it while it lasts.

_Daryl._

_Daryl._

_Daryl._


	2. Hunting Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl spots a herd of deer, and takes Rick and Carol along to track them deep into the late autumn forest.

The sun is only a fuzzy, indeterminate thing as they load the trunk of the SUV they had salvaged from a half-remote used car lot just a week ago. The old trucks from the farm did not last long.

It is yellow, the sun, fizzling out at the edges into the grey-blue fog of the dawn sky. Still hurts to look at it, even under such atmospheric cover.

Rick drives, like usual, with Daryl shotgun and Carol cradled in the safety of the vast backseat. It had been a morning not unlike this one, a few days prior, when their temporary camp had been overrun. Daryl had taken to the forest with a group—Maggie, Glenn, Lori—charging through the underbrush in their frenzy to leave behind the walkers when a clearing opened up, and, like a sudden miracle, they ran right into a herd of migrating white-tail deer.

Daryl immediately threw his arm back to warn the others, stop their already-deep descent into the middle of the animal camp. That was when a single doe locked eyes with him, and for one second the world stood still. Her tan down, almost feathery, and the dark eyes that had not yet perceived them as threats and were, simply, curious. That long snout raising from the grass to regard them as the afterthought of delicate chewing continued on.

Then her tail was raised, revealing the white underneath, and the rest of them were off into the thicket as quickly as anything.

Only for survival, the walkers still hot on their heels, did Daryl lead them after the herd, most likely pushing them farther out than they would have gone on their own.

“How many were there, again?” Rick asks.

Daryl shifts in his seat, bringing his gaze from the car window. “Dunno. Probably fourteen, fifteen.”

“Bucks and does?”

Daryl nods, returning to the view rushing by outside.

“Any baby deer?”

Daryl, slightly irritated, shoots him a look. “No. Those only come in spring.” He blinks hard, tries to soften his voice when he feels Carol’s eyes on the back of his neck. “I mean, it’s the rut now. They’re bein’ made, the babies.”

Rick clears his throat, and a silence falls over the cabin of the vehicle once more. Rick had concurred, after a few weeks of scant food, and the winter approaching, that Daryl’s idea of a hunting trip would be useful for the coming weeks. They had found a shelter at a local wildlife preserve, where the welcome center had still-untouched vending machines and a rainwater cistern. That is where the rest of the group rested, while he and Rick went out to look for the herd. Daryl agreed to track them if Rick agreed to teach Carol shooting, a skill which they all decided she was long overdue to learn.

“Here’s a good a place as any,” Daryl eventually says. They have been following a maintenance road for a railroad track since the welcome center, and a long-forgotten depot adds some shelter for where they end up parking, in a clearing a couple hundred yards away.

“Might wanna wait on gettin’ stuff set up,” Daryl suggests. “Could be farther off than what I think. We’ll know when we get to tracking.”

With his piece said, Daryl starts to remove his vest and shirt. Carol and Rick look on.

“What’re you doing?” Carol asks, hesitant.

Daryl sees himself, then looks back up at them, suddenly shy. His voice goes gruff and defensive. “We gotta camouflage our scent. Rub dirt and leaves on us.”

Rick’s eyebrow tweaks but the man says nothing. Carol suppresses a laugh but starts to shed her coat anyway.

“Whatever you say, mountain man,” she teases.

Daryl, wishing to hide his face, goes to a nearby cropping of pine trees and rips some slender boughs of sap-sticky needles to bring back to the group. He bends to cover his skin in the loamy earth and stays solitary like this. The deep scent of the soil soothes him.

Then, a huge clod of it breaks over his shoulder. He looks up quickly, to Carol in her tank top, whose face is cracking open into a playful smile.

“You didn’t,” Daryl growls, returning the smile, before launching from his haunches to rush at her. He wraps his arms around her middle and lifts her, brings her down to the ground in a soft tackle. She’s laughing as he reaches for some fallen leaves and crunches them into her hair.

“You got me,” Carol assents, calling for mercy with a screwed-up face, slightly out of breath from her laughter. Daryl chuckles and pushes off the ground. He holds out a hand for her to grasp, and lifts her to her feet.

Rick is staring at him when he turns. In the still-dawn haze of light, his features are almost tender. The usually hard face seems to turn to air in its tempered curiosity, perched above a plane of downy flesh which ends at his gun belt slung around his denim-clad waist.

Daryl swallows, suddenly reminded of the doe. His gaze only breaks when Rick turns demurely back to the ministration of crushing pine needles between his palms.

They are all shivering slightly by the time everyone is sufficiently scent masked, some hotter breaths coming out in clouds of mist.

“Alright, follow me,” Daryl says, after the guns have been distributed and the trunk of the car closed up. He has his crossbow slung over his back and a rifle in his right hand, while Rick and Carol both carry rifles as well, on top of their usual knives and handguns.

Daryl leads, with Carol following, and Rick bringing up the rear. Focused on trailing the herd, Daryl mostly lets the others watch for walkers and any other threats. He thinks, besides a walker bite, the last thing they need is for a buck in rut to spot them encroaching upon his space, his front hoof stamping the forest floor before charging.

About half an hour into their venture, Daryl throws up a fist against the air and signals them all to stop. The scent of deer urine pricks at his nose, and some droppings alert him that they are on the outer edge of the herd. That is when he spots them, in the distance—only it is not just the fourteen or fifteen from before, but more like thirty. All grazing, all ambling between the trees. Daryl’s body freezes, and Carol, close behind him, senses this and does not make a movement further. Rick, however, too focused on walkers or not close enough to notice, brings his foot down on a rotting log. It falls straight through, making a loud crack that rings out into the heady morning air.

A buck spots them, its head tilted back into a hundred yard stare, long almond ears shifting like satellite dishes around its head.

“Shit,” Daryl mutters, voice barely a breath. Slowly he readies his rifle, locked in a stare with the male, watching for any sign that it may rush them. Its heavy breath cascades like a smoke out into the dimness of the forest, its eyes never blinking nor leaving Daryl’s. Just when he thinks that front hoof will raise, the tail does instead. Knowing what this means, he pulls the rifle into his shoulder to line up a shot before it is too late—but within an instant the others have taken notice to the buck’s warning signal, and the whole herd scatters into the far reaches of the forest, beyond range.

“Dammit,” Daryl curses, bringing the rifle down from his cheek. He swoops on Rick, who is trying to dislodge his foot from the rotten bough.

“What about ‘be quiet’ don’t you get?” he asks, a bit harsh. Those blue eyes burn into his, the face screwed up into a scowl. But before anything can be said, Carol’s hand is on Daryl’s forearm. He rips away, takes a few paces from their circle and collects a deep breath to hold in his lungs.

“Let’s go back to camp,” Carol suggests. Daryl nods tersely in agreement. Rick finally brings his foot from the wood and, with an acidic scoff, Daryl heads out—once again taking lead.

The silence that permeates their walk back is tense. Daryl tries to let the irritation he feels smooth out into something less prickly, less boiling, as he knows this is what Carol would tell him to do. This is how Carol would speak to the insidious thing that whispers in his ear. Whispers that he’d be better off alone—that he can do this on his own. That people only get in the way. That people only disappoint.

And that was how his anger worked—taking the most innocuous mistake and magnifying it tenfold until it became something which swallowed him whole. A dying star, imploding, leaving behind just a bit of dust. A lingering thing, a field upon which he can sow his own end. Something grows there that tells him he doesn’t want to hurt other people. Instead, who he really wants to hurt is himself. A never-slaked thirst for this sense of tainted empowerment, this outright self-destruction.

Calmer now, Daryl bends to pick some wild mint that he spots amongst some brush. He slips a few sprigs into his pocket, then passes a handful back to Carol, who takes half and passes the rest to Rick.

“What do we do with this?” Rick’s voice floats up to him. It is an even tone, free of judgement and emotion.

“Chew it,” Daryl replies, still rough around the edges. He turns and meets Rick’s eyes, squinting slightly, before slipping a leaf past his lips in a sort of demonstration. He watches Rick mimic him, watches the man experience this thing for the first time. The corner of his mouth turns up.

“It’s good,” Rick says, slipping another leaf past his lips.

“It’s mint,” Daryl says, before continuing on the trail back to camp. His chest loses some of its tightness, and he feels much better when the fog lifts and the full morning sun cascades its warmth against his jaw, his neck. He closes his eyes and can see two separate gazes swim in and out of the visual ocean behind his eyelids, one brown and one blue.

It is easier to let it go.

…

They regroup around a campfire near the car, drinking coffee that Carol has heated.

“How did you know there were others?” Rick asks.

“Its tail,” Daryl states. Rick’s curious stare tells him to elaborate. “Don’t put their tails up like that unless they need to talk to other ones, ‘cause it is better to hold it down, be all stealth-like. Less obvious to predators to hide that white part.” Daryl takes a sip from his tin cup. “Deer got a language’a their own, just like people do.”

Carol hums. “That’s a lovely thought.”

Rick readjusts his grip around his own wrists, leaning forward. “How’d you learn all this?”

“Livin’ off the land. Watchin’. I spent a lot of time in the forest, after my Ma died. And later, Merle and me. It was easier.”

“Were you homeless?” Carol ventures, after a pause.

Daryl tilts his head to spit. “I guess. Didn’t really think about it like that. We’d crash places for a while, with friends or somethin’ but, yeah.” Daryl shrugs. “Thought the forest was better than people. Especially the people Merle was usually bringing around.”

Carol’s brow furrows but she does not say anything. Daryl is uncomfortable that he had been the last to speak, the one to cause such a silence, and so begins to fidget with his cup. “Anyway,” he says. “They’ll be back.”

“How do you know?” Rick echoes, repeating himself.

“It’s the rut,” Daryl smirks, lifting himself up from where he had been sitting by the fire. “And they’re beddin’ here.”

…

Later in the morning, Rick suggests that they take some time to practice Carol’s shooting. Carol agrees, enthusiastic to get started.

Daryl finds a tree, hollow and dead, and arranges a bright red leaf in the center of its trunk, sticking it on with some sap from a neighboring new-growth sproutling. He lines his feet up, toe to heel, counting the steps from the trunk. At thirty, he stops and signals Carol over.

“Try it from here,” he tells her. Rick is rolling a felled limb over, his upper arms straining against his canvas jacket, positioning it to mark her spot and provide something for her to lean her shin against for the low shots.

“Rifle or handgun?” Rick asks her.

Carol looks thoughtfully from one gun to the other. “Rifle,” she says. Rick passes it off to her.

“Now, the first thing you’re gonna wanna be aware of is the kickback,” he starts. The man’s arms expertly wrangle the piece, holding it deftly, gently, powerfully at the mock-target. Daryl cannot take his eyes away from the man and this gun, cannot stop observing the delicacy, the ministrations that pass before his eyes. Those muscles, fine and flexible, tense as they move to coax the gun into submission, to use the tool toward his end. Daryl has to take a drink of water, has to avert his eyes. He is only able to watch for a moment before scanning the area around them. The clearing is relatively open, so it is easy to spot walkers coming from a distance.

“Get the stock in the cradle... right, just like that.”

“Shouldn’t you be teachin’ her offhand stance, first?” Daryl calls after observing, almost daring the other man to take his position, right his movements, away from ones so lewd.

Rick raises his eyes, squinting. “Thought I’d go easy on her, to begin with.”

Daryl scoffs. “Ain’t no point in teachin’ her sitting. Think a walker’s just gonna be waiting to get shot? You gotta do it on the run.”

Rick shakes his head, pushing his hair back from his eyes. “How’s she gonna get the technique down that way? She’s gotta learn the basics before getting into an unpredictable stance like that.”

Before Daryl can argue, a single shot rings out into the clearing. Carol removes her cheek from the stock, lowering the rifle, and gives out a happy cry.

“Almost,” she says, a breath away from whooping with joy.

“No fuckin’ way,” Rick replies. Daryl jogs over to the tree, sees where the bullet entered just a half inch underneath the leaf.

“Way to go, Carol!” he calls. Then, goading Rick, “Think she can handle offhand, now, officer?”

Rick looks down at Carol. “I’ll teach you whatever you want if you shoot him ri’ now,” he says to her, voice loud enough to reach Daryl, who quickly, smirking at Rick, jogs out of range. Carol just laughs, ducking her cheek back down to line up another shot at the tree.

They find that she is a natural, pretty early on. It only takes a few shots before she is able to manipulate control of each type of gun, enough to get the job done.

“You sure you ain’t done this before?” Daryl asks her as they take a break, pulling an arrow out of the head of a walker who was drawn in by the noise of the gun shots.

“I mean, just when I had to,” Carol says. “Before the first camp, before y’all. But honestly, Ed was the one who could shoot. So I never really tried.” Carol picks at the grass beneath them, her eyes raising to scan the horizon. “Also. Well. Ed never let me near his guns,” she says, half-irritated. She pulls out a small clump of grass.

“Well. You’re getting your own guns from here on out,” Rick tells her. “You’re gonna end up bein’ better than Ed.”

Daryl chuckles. “Much better,” he agrees.

Around noon, Daryl suggests they go scavenging. If they are staying, waiting for the herd to return, collecting some food from the scenery will allow the packed food they’ve brought to stretch out longer. He shows them how to pick through and find wild-growing berries, some of which are just coming into season.

“Blue and purple,” he says, picking up his feet through the underbrush, “those ones are ninety-eight percent of the time gonna be okay. Never,” he stresses, “never eat anythin’ white or yellow.”

“And red?” Carol asks, moving around a low-hanging branch to her left.

“Better to not risk it,” he replies. “Unless you know what it is.”

Eventually, Carol finds a promising bush. Daryl identifies it as beautyberry, then pulls out his bandana from his back pocket. He knots it into a sling that he slips his wrist through and begins collecting berries.

“You sure these aren’t fake?” Rick asks. “The color don’t look right.”

“Yeah, dummy,” Daryl says with some mirth. “Try one.”

Rick shoots a dubious look at Carol before popping one bright purple piece into his mouth. He chews for a moment, then grimaces.

“Why is it kinda spicy?”

Daryl and Carol can’t help but laugh at the expression on the other man’s face.

“It’s good for you,” Daryl tells him. “Means it’s workin’.”

They have a mound of berries by the time they’ve picked the bush clean. Each of their fingertips have been stained bright pink from the juice. Daryl holds his bandana like a basket as they stalk back to the car, back to camp. Carol practices shooting on the move on a few errant walkers along their path, using the silencer they had brought along.

Back at camp, Daryl begins to set up their tent next to the hood of the car. Though the sun won’t set for another few hours, he has promised to take Rick out to practice tracking. Carol chooses to hang back and work on some knitting for Carl. She holes up in the car with her needles and a gun. Rick and Daryl promise to be back before dusk.

They’ve been walking through reeds for a moment, bending to collect some water from a small stream, when Rick caps his bottle and gives Daryl a long look.

“What?” Daryl asks. “You’re bein’ weird, man.”

Rick shakes his head. “It’s just amazing that you know all this. Thank you, for teachin’ us.”

Daryl shrugs, breaking the gaze to look back at the bottle he holds into the stream. He shifts the weight of his crossbow against his back as he moves to stand.

“First thing you wanna know about tracking,” he starts, king of non-sequiturs, “is that everythin’ is connected. From the animals to the plants, the way stuff smells and sounds—you gotta pay attention to it all.”

After a bit of a sermon, Daryl has Rick stay in one spot while he moves far off, through the forest, making zig zags. He finds himself reaching his palms out to snap twigs unnecessarily and laying the soles of his boots down with all of his weight, trying to make it easier for the other man to follow him, to find him. He ends up stopping his trail near a half-cavern set against a shallow hill, squatting, wrapping his arms around his knees while the falling sun dances through the canopy above him and throws a little warmth onto the cool skin of his cheeks.

Though the journey there took him only fifteen minutes, he sits and waits for Rick for just over a half hour before deciding to move, as this means the man is either lost, or in trouble. He picks up his trail about ten minutes from where he had crouched, the broken sapling he had stomped on obvious, and obviously ignored, as Rick’s trail moves from it in a fork heading the opposite direction. Daryl sighs, keeping a wary eye on the sun’s steady descent toward the horizon.

He finds the other man about twenty minutes away, unscathed but totally and utterly off Daryl’s trail.

“You’re really bad at this,” Daryl admits as they hike their way back.

Rick scoffs. “It’s only my first time,” he says, locking Daryl’s eyes in a mirth-filled gaze. Daryl swallows hard, involuntarily. “We can’t all be Carol.”

The golden light of sundown sets the autumn leaves on the trees around them on fire. Daryl pays attention for signs of woodland creatures crawling through, scurrying home, for one to bring back for dinner. Rick agrees to keep an eye out for walkers as he does this, and eventually has two rabbits slung over his shoulder for his efforts.

“Y’know, Merle and me, we used these huntin’ calls when we’d go out. Even for walkers, too. They’re pretty useful.” Daryl throws a hesitant gaze over to Rick, bringing his feet up higher than usual the clear the underbrush. The skin on that olive-toned cheek has gone firey, catching leaf-shaped shadows that dapple over the strong edge of his jaw as they walk.

“Yeah?” Rick asks, mulling the thought over. “You wanna teach me?”

So Daryl does. The act of sharing this thing that had been just between he and his brother is something bittersweet. It makes a spot ache in the back of his spine, just between the shoulder blades.

Daryl adjusts the rabbits in his grip during a prolonged silence, after. He holds them by their legs, throwing the occasional glance at Rick’s back once they are within a few minutes of camp.

“What?” Rick eventually asks, without turning. Daryl hadn’t thought his stares were obvious, and he feels a slight heat creep underneath the collar of his shirt.

“Nothin’,” Daryl admits. “You’re just—” he pauses. “You’re going a little grey.”

Rick runs his fingers through the curls on the back of his head, ducking around a low branch. “That so?” he chuckles. “Guess I’ll be forty… or, am forty?” He thinks for a moment. “Yeah. I turned forty in the hospital.”

Daryl whistles, long and low. “Wow,” he says. “Congratulations.”

Rick throws a look his way. “How old’re you?”

Daryl shakes his head. “Dunno, stopped keepin’ track a long time ago. Probably around the same.”

Rick takes him in, slowing his pace while he runs his eyes from his toes up to the crown of his head. He settles his eyes back on Daryl’s before ripping them away, resuming the pace they had been going at.

“Younger,” Rick murmurs. “Hard to tell. You smoke.”

Daryl fires back, “Only when you haven’t stolen ‘em first.”

They get back right at dusk, as promised. Carol has already maneuvered out of the car, and walks over to touch the rabbits that Daryl hands to her, running her fingers through their fur.

“Oh, they’re really big. Good catch, Pookie.”

Daryl turns up the corner of his mouth. “What was that?”

Carol’s smile lifts into a smirk as she walks away with the rabbits, moving to the edge of the fire she had built in their absence. She starts to skin them the way that Daryl had showed her a few weeks prior, laying them against the flattest stone she can find, then taking her blade across their bellies and removing the innards. Daryl watches her work, and notices Rick’s presence beside him after a moment.

“We should boil the water,” he says. Daryl nods in agreement, moving to fetch the pan from the trunk of the car. Rick positions the grate over the flames, and Daryl pours the water in the pan. A few minutes pass, in which Carol fills the empty silence with a few off-key, yet sweet, hummed melodies.

“How’d Rick do?” she asks, throwing the rabbit meat onto the grate next to the pan of water. “He find you?”

Daryl snorts. “What d’you think?”

Rick turns his face away, pretending he doesn’t hear. Carol’s mouth turns up in a wry smile, but she does not pursue the topic further.

“I finished Carl’s sweater,” she says instead, turning her gaze toward Rick. She pokes absently at the meat with a thin stick. “Hopefully he’s okay with something half brown, and half maroon.”

Rick nods. “It’ll suit him just fine, as long as it’s warm. Thank you.”

Carol nods back. By the time the rabbit has been cooked and consumed, night has fallen, and Rick volunteers to sleep in the back seat so Daryl and Carol can share the tent.

“It’s big enough to fit us all,” Daryl says, meeting Rick’s eyes over the dying fire. They’re passing around a handle of whisky, not imbibing enough to get them drunk but just enough to fight the cold biting at the tips of their noses.

Rick just shakes his head. “You two have it. I’ll be okay.”

Carol meets his gaze and shrugs. Daryl decides not to pursue it, taking a swig before handing the bottle to Carol.

He finds it hard to drift off with the sounds of nature all around them. Normally, these kinds of sounds lull him straight into sleep. So why does he feel this way? Carol has long since slipped into unconsciousness, her soft breaths panning out against the air inside the tent. Daryl flips around in his sleeping bag until he can’t stand it anymore. He moves as quietly as possible from where he lays. He exits the tent, silent as a shadow, to turn his face up to the near-full moonlight.

“The mourning moon,” drawls a familiar voice in a low hum. Daryl looks around. Rick is close by, leaning against the trunk of the car, his arms crossed against his chest. Daryl shivers, walking over to him.

“What?”

“The last full moon before winter,” the other man replies. “People call it the mourning moon.” Rick blinks, regarding him with slightly squinted eyes. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Daryl clears his throat. “Had to piss.”

Rick chuckles. “Don’t let me stop you.”

The tone gives Daryl pause, but he continues on to the outskirts of the camp, lifting his legs over the walker fence and all its metallic hangings. He relieves himself against a tree, breathing in, deeply, the crisp night air.

On his way back, he notices Rick is still propped against the car. “Sure you don’t wanna come in the tent?” he asks.

Rick shakes his head, once. “No. You two enjoy.”

Daryl squints his eyes, pausing, a question on the tip of his tongue. He takes in Rick’s gaze measuredly, trying to read the subtext there, and, feeling in his bones, what is being implied. But, ultimately, he bites his tongue.

“They might be back tomorrow,” he grunts. “The herd.”

“That so?” Rick asks.

“Yeah.” Daryl pauses. “We should be quiet in the morning, though. Gotta make sure they ain’t scared off again.” He says this in the softest way possible, trying to detangle his words to ensure the earlier irritation does not echo around in the sentiment.

Rick nods, and Daryl knows he can hear the similarities of the words, but not the emotion behind them. He takes it in stride, replying simply, “Gotcha.”

Daryl lingers for a moment, turning his face back up to the moon, before heading back to his sleeping bag. “Night,” he calls to Rick, who returns the sentiment quietly.

Slowly, fitfully, he falls to sleep under the almost-mourning moon’s light.

…

In the morning, he wakes to find Rick and Carol already sat around a meager fire. They are sharing some leftover berries from yesterday’s harvest, passing a coffee mug back and forth as they chat in murmurs, albeit animated, against the slow morning fog rolling across the plain.

“Morning,” they both greet him as he joins them by the side of the fire. He tries to smooth down his rumpled vest, fix his bedhead by running his fingers repeatedly through it.

“Mornin’,” he drawls, taking a seat against a log. He pushes the toes of his boots into the edge of the fire, warming them against the stones set in a circle there. “We got any more coffee?”

Rick hands him the mug. “There’s more on the fire,” he says. Daryl clears his throat before downing the rest of the tepid cup. He reaches, pulls the pan toward him and empties it into the mug. “Thanks,” he mutters.

“Rick told me you think the deer’ll be back today,” Carol murmurs to his right. Daryl nods, resettling himself against the log, still waking up.

“Yeah,” he confirms. “I can try to track ‘em. Make sure we ain’t wasting our time.”

Both Carol and Rick agree that this is a good idea.

“I won’t go with you,” Rick says, “Until I’m up to snuff.”

Daryl downs half the cup of coffee in response, standing up and stretching his body entire against the early morning air. He has to suppress a groan, swallowing it, as he looks from Rick to Carol.

“We should get out those clothes,” Carol suggests.

Daryl nods. “I’ll track once the fog has cleared.”

He moves back toward the trunk of the car to pull out some of their family’s shirts and pants, grabbing a roll of dental floss and some sewing needles before handing half to Carol.

“You can sew?” Rick asks.

“Yeah, man,” Daryl replies. “How you think these got on here?” He motions toward the wings on his vest, shrugging his shoulder so they are in clear view of the other man. Rick picks himself up, inching closer, really taking a look at the vest for the first time. He studies it, all its messily sewn stitches. But, regardless, secure within the backdrop of the leather.

“It was a first attempt,” Daryl says, throwing a small smile at Carol who returns it. “Gotten better since. But,” he continues, “floss is still the best thread.”

Carol nods in confirmation when Rick turns her way. She threads the eye of her needle with it, taking it to one of Hershel’s ripped shirt seams.

Rick sits back against the logs surrounding the fire, watching this scene transpire while he drinks down the rest of the coffee. He reaches out to Daryl, who knows that the other man’s finger movements mean that he is itching for a cig.

“Okay,” he agrees, stopping his mending for a moment to reach into his pack for the carton and his zippo. Carol smiles to herself as Daryl reaches out, filling Rick’s fingers with a willing filter.

“That’s not good for you, you know,” Carol tells them after they have passed the cigarette back and forth a few times.

“They’re not the end of the world,” Rick drawls.

Daryl snorts at the other man’s dark joke. They sit like this for some time, chatting intermittently, before Daryl stands and begins to collect his bow, gun, and knife.

At a few yards away he turns back, watching Rick and Carol speaking to one another at the fire. Carol is gesturing and Rick’s face cracks into a smile. The man reaches out toward her, placing the flat of his palm amicably against her forearm. Daryl stares at the gesture before turning back, heading toward the stream. He washes his hands, face, and neck in the cool water flowing there, mixing a little non-iodide salt into the small thing of unscented bar soap he has brought with him. It effectively gets rid of the cigarette smell, ensuring that the herd will not pick up his scent from a mile away.

He takes to running his hands over the broad leaves of the shedding trees, feeling the slight tickle of their edges along the callouses on his palms, picking his feet up one over the other. He has to dispose of a couple walkers, but mostly the walk is peaceful—the air is crisp, and the canopy lets some light shed itself against boughs and his skin alike. The farm, despite its space, had never felt like this to Daryl. He wonders why that is: why, amongst the thick trunks littering this space, the danger that could be behind corners, the useful plants and animals hiding beneath the brush—that for all the maze-like movements required, for all the cacophony of sounds, scents, the untidy orderliness of nature—why does he feel freer here than just about anywhere else?

About thirty minutes away from camp he smells the familiar marking spray, sees those hoof prints so stark against the mud and leaves of the forest floor. He crouches, barely daring to breathe, until he sights three does gathered in a group around a white-flowered hemlock. As they are preoccupied with grazing, Daryl’s presence goes unnoticed. He backs away quietly, still crouching on his haunches, staying low.

When he returns to camp, Rick and Carol are right where he left them, chatting beside the dying fire. He tells them about the herd, to hurry and collect their things to go back after them. Rick kicks some dirt onto the fire with the flat side of his boot, and Carol slings a rifle over her shoulder before dipping to rub some earth and pine over herself.

They set off, and Daryl realizes the other two are wholly unprepared. It is not unusual, this, taking beginners into the depths of the woods. But with all else banking on their—his—ability to bring home a kill, the stakes are raised along with his blood pressure. He tugs fitfully at his bow, the rifle strap, splayed so cleanly against his shoulder. He throws his gaze back occasionally, hoping that there will be no other mishaps. Yet he cannot, and will not, tell them to lag behind. That is just not within his code any longer.

Once he knows they are within a minute of the herd, the forest seems to stand still, seems to mirror the stillness inside him, now. The reserve that silences his breathing is the same reserve that halts the wind, that weaves his and his companion’s movements into an elegant choreograph. Beautiful but giving off no sound, this familiar ballet carries on regardless of observers—lets Daryl know that the culmination of his tracking and hunting skills will come to a crescendo of measured action.

Then, he sights the herd. A buck is standing nearby, placid and still, mirroring the human movements of him and his counterparts. The rack is like a crown above his broad head, tall and angular. Those eyes are curious, only, and a sacred breath moves out of the wide nostrils to pan out against the unmoving air.

Daryl’s body knows before his brain knows, so his hands react seemingly on their own. As easy as breathing in he takes the rifle soundlessly to his cheek as he bends his legs into a crouch, connected firmly to the earth. He aligns the stock, Carol and Rick waiting with bated breath just behind him. Then, as easy as breathing out, he looses a shot into the head of the buck.

The bullet passes cleanly through the buck’s skull, and all at once the life leaves those muscular limbs. It folds in on itself, crumples, drops to the floor with an audible thump.

“Gettin’ really good at that,” Daryl mutters to the others, breaking the silence, as he removes the stock from his cheek and engages the safety with a slight flick of his thumb. The shock of the success takes a silent second to waver and dissipate, but when it does Rick whoops, shoving Daryl hard enough to make him stagger against the ground. All at once the rest of the herd is bounding away, and Rick is laughing while Daryl sets a wary gaze on Carol. She reveals a small, elated smile.

“Calm down,” Daryl mutters, shoving Rick back. The man grins cheekily, overcome with the success and what it will mean for their survival, their whole group’s ability to eat.

“It’s huge,” is all he can seem to say.

“Uh-huh,” Daryl agrees, nonplussed, slinging the rifle over his shoulder and standing. “Must have ten-pound balls on it.”

They all don leather utility gloves to haul the beast by its razor-sharp rack, stretching it out to allow Daryl to begin field dressing a distance from the shot, in case the sound had drawn any walkers out of the trees. With the white-as-snow belly turned up toward the sun, Daryl takes the nutsack into his palm and yanks up, cuts quickly around it in a few short pulls of his knife.

"Don’t gotta do this to the does,” Daryl tells them, a kind of joke to himself, as Carol and Rick grimace at his quickness, the unadulterated way he takes to doing this without any kind of segue. On his knees by the pelvis of the buck, the two hold its forelegs apart for him to butterfly it better.

“This is called the zipper,” he grunts, the effort of pulling the blade of the knife up the center seam of the hide checking the pace of his breathing. “Move aside a bit so I don’t gitcha.”

Rick and Carol hover further away, pulling the hooves as opposed to the upper musculature of the beast. Daryl gets to the ribcage and the sawing through its weaker sternum makes a crunching sound so blood-slick that Carol goes pale for a moment.

“Next is the membrane,” Daryl continues, reaching into the steaming cavity of the buck and pushing aside the lungs. “Make sure you don’t nick the guts or it’ll smell somethin’ terrible.”

Rick grunts with suppressed disgust but Daryl is too focused on the pale purple lining that separates the organ sack from the wall of the ribcage to look up. He slices through it on both sides, then digs his hand in past the center of the lungs and pulls forth the papaya-sized, brown-red heart.

“Find the heart,” Daryl instructs, “then follow it up to the throat. You wanna cut as much of that out as you can, ‘cause it goes bad fast. And then,” he continues, “just rip out the upper organs. No need to cut.”

The sound of the viscera ripping out of the cavity is a hollow kind of sucking, echoey and dry. He does this while the others look on, slopping the pale organ sack inelegantly against the crushed leaves and grasses underfoot. His arms are bloodied halfway up to the elbow, now. When he looks up, both Rick and Carol have turned their gazes away from his ministrations. He blows some air out of his nose, continuing to cut out the colon and saw through the pelvis without any further color commentary.

“C’mon. Let’s lift ‘im, drain ‘im,” he finally says when he is finished.

He rounds over to Carol, helping her lift her side’s shoulder as Rick grapples with his. As they raise the carcass, the blood pours from the open cavity at the bowl of the pelvis, wetly rushing out to darken the dirt.

“He’s done. Let’s go.”

Back at the camp, Daryl prepares a shoulder for their dinner by sawing through the foreleg and blunting the sharp edge of the shoulder blade. Carol helps hold the animal and position it while he does this, and Rick drags some felled tree boughs to chop up for their fire.

Daryl raises his eyes curiously to Carol’s face, and notices that its color has returned despite the woman’s set jaw.

“Gettin’ tougher, huh?” he asks with a smally proud smile.

Carol nods. “Nothin’ is gonna bother me, soon,” she replies tersely, determined.

“Good,” Daryl says. “We gotta get the rest of this meat chopped up and into garbage bags before nightfall.” Daryl takes his knife back to the flesh, slicing. “Put it in the trees, away from the walkers and other beasts.”

The steady tick of Rick’s axe is the only music in the clearing, setting an even pace to their work. Daryl throws the occasional glance at the other man, watching the elegant arc of his swings, the satisfying whack as the blade cleaves, makes contact. Soon he has a sufficient pile from which they can fuel their cooking fire. Around the same time, Daryl and Carol have finished sectioning out the meat.

“Help me with this,” he calls gruffly to Rick, motioning at the black garbage bags. They throw them over their shoulders, Daryl with a long length of braided rope in one hand, and stalk off a few hundred yards away from camp. Carol has agreed to take care of the significantly lighter skeleton, carrying the bones off in the opposite direction.

“We’ll do a basket knot to hold ‘em,” Daryl decides. “Like macramé.”

They tie two lengths of rope, one for each bag, into circles and twist it around itself as one would in order to hang a potted plant. Then Daryl throws a length, one end weighted by a fallen tree branch, over a sturdy-looking bough. He ties the bag onto it, hoists it up with Rick’s help.

The other man, panting by now, has sweat-slicked skin at his neck and forearms. Daryl brushes against him on accident, moving to tie off the rope for easy access later, and feels the wetness of his body radiating heat. The other man’s flannel is soaked through and that canvas jacket has been long-since slung to the forest floor.

Rick catches Daryl’s wandering eye as they finish with the last bag. “I’m gonna wash up in the stream,” the other man says quietly, bending to pick up his jacket and head back toward the camp. “Come get me when dinner’s done?”

Daryl nods, watching the other man leave, unable to halt nor hide this careful attention.

By nightfall, the shoulder is tender enough to tear into. Carol cuts up portions of the shoulder against a warm rock near the fire, passing them out to both of the men before slicing into her own piece.

After dinner, Daryl once again brings out the bottle of whisky. He lights a cigarette and takes a drag, passing it to Rick before the other man can even ask.

Carol clears her throat, declining as the bottle is passed her way. “I’m beat,” she says. “Too much excitement today. I’ll head out first.”

They say their goodnights as she enters the tent and zips it closed behind her.

The fire entrances. Daryl can barely keep himself conscious, taken into its serpentine belly. The flames twist against and lick at the air, teaching, beguiling. Daryl cannot stop this thought from popping into his mind: That something must be sacrificed in order to come into existence.

When Daryl looks up, Rick is holding out the cigarette for him to take. He comes to with a subtle jolt, reaching out but avoiding Rick’s eyes. He sucks down some tobacco, washes it off his tongue with the whisky. Smoke and oak.

“I know you don’t like me much,” Rick starts after a moment more of thick silence. “An’ that’s fine. You don’t have to.”

Daryl takes a swig to avoid having to speak. It isn’t really true, and he knows Rick is looking at him, but he refuses to raise his eyes from the line of rocks surrounding the fire, refuses to take his eyes from the crackling wood there and the lines of magma that run through it, split it, devour it.

“But I’ll never forget the kindness you did me with Dale. You know,” Rick clears his throat. “That’s the first time I realized I could look to you. That you weren’t jus’ gonna stalk off to make more arrows when there was things needed to be done.”

Daryl knocks back another scant mouthful, letting it slide over his tongue before handing the bottle to Rick. Their eyes meet briefly, and Daryl cannot see well for being fire-blind, but the earnestness in that weary face does not escape him. In truth, Daryl had seen that Rick had no hope left to spare, and that it would end him to have to end it again. So he had slipped his hand over Rick’s, softly pulled the piece away. Handled it.

“I should’ve been able to. But you—” Rick pauses, deciding to scrap it as he tilts the bottle to his lips. “Thank you,” he finishes, simply.

“No need,” Daryl mutters. He flicks the cigarette butt into the heart of the flames. “You already said that to me, back at the farm.”

“It bears repeatin’.” Rick swallows another mouthful. “Because I know you’re tryin’. And I appreciate it.”

Daryl pulls his boot heel deeper into the dirt, fidgeting, saying nothing.

“Y’know, after Shane,” Rick continues, the name coming out strange, almost strangled. “After Shane, I didn’t know what to do.”

Daryl’s ears perk up at this. It had been weeks since that name was mentioned by anyone in their group, much less by Rick himself. He now stares as Rick avoids the gaze, looking instead to the fire as he absently swills some more amber liquid from the bottle. It is almost gone, now, the drink.

So many moments pass that Daryl thinks that will be the end of that. Then the other man chews at his lip, opens his mouth hesitantly before continuing.

“I knew him before I knew Lori,” Rick admits, so softly, and Daryl wonders why this voice is full of guilt. It is deeper than the death, and deeper than being forced into such a situation with someone once thought to be a friend, a partner. Daryl can hear that, can feel that sink like a stone, indigestible, in his stomach.

“I _knew_ him,” Rick repeats, bitterness edging the tone. His eyes lock with Daryl’s over the fire.

Daryl shivers involuntarily, this truth settling into place against his spine. He sees Rick take another swig from the handle of whisky, and wonders if the man seated across from him is inebriated. It had been a while since Jenner’s and the wine, and really no cause for celebration between. He had seen how poorly Rick handled his booze—not that there was anything wrong with it—but his own experience with the stuff makes his head clearer now, and, curious about why this man is telling him this.

“I always chose wrong,” Rick says, the words a bite at the end of the swallow. “I’ve only loved people who done me wrong.”

Daryl runs his eyes over Rick’s uncertain lean, the way in which he shifts his weight from elbow to elbow and tries to busy his hands by worrying the small bottle between them, going as far as to pick at the edge of the paste-paper label on its neck. He had not expected this kind of conversation with the other man. Could he just be anyone, an empty vessel, to Rick? Someone close by that he could pour something out on and walk away?

“Or, maybe… I dunno,” Rick tries. “Is that what love is? Something that drags itself on despite not havin’ legs or arms to move?”

Daryl clears his throat, trying to find something to say—wishing desperately something would hand him the words from on high, tell him what to do in order to comfort the other man, in order to make sure he was pulling the weight. But those eyes bore into his against the veil of the dying fire’s scant light, seeming to truly see him despite their lack of sobriety. And he realizes suddenly that no words could suffice.

“Give me that, man,” Daryl mutters, taking the bottle from Rick and capping it. He tosses it gently against the ground opposite, then moves to stand. “It ain’t true—I like you enough, alright? But we should get some sleep.”

Rick seems stunned. He stares as Daryl stalks over, pushes dirt into the near-dead fire with his shoe. Daryl throws his arm down and lifts Rick, who is unsteady on his feet, from the log.

Daryl runs the zipper around the entrance to the tent, quiet as to not wake Carol. Rick slips a bit as he lowers himself onto the ground inside, Daryl settling himself between Carol and the other man in the dark.

When he has laid back, Carol stirs against his left arm. She wakes for a moment, nods sleepily as she sees his face turned toward her, before the soft breath of sleep comes over her again.

From the corner of his eye, he watches the outline of Rick’s shoulder stoop subtly with his own slowing breaths. He doesn’t know how long he watches before the other man stirs, pivoting to face him. He feels like this is unreality: the still quiet of the night, the brightness of the moon, Rick’s eyes otherworldly blue and all-seeing.

An olive-skinned hand reaches out. Rick slides his hand under Daryl’s arm, wrapping around his ribcage to his back, pulling him steadily toward his body. Rick’s face is set, not devoid of emotion but not revealing anything, either.

Then he reaches Rick, their thighs brushing, before the man steals forward to press his nose into Daryl’s neck. Daryl doesn’t know why he is letting this happen, but the momentum of it all rushes over him like a liquid sand pouring slowly from one end of an hourglass to the other. He knows that there is no stopping it until it has stopped, and so when Rick’s breath pans out against the skin at his throat, he closes his eyes, he lets himself sink into the overwhelming warmth there. He lets himself make a promise to himself—something light, and fluttering. Something that had been there in him since that first night off the farm, in the ruins, and was only now given the words: That he will never be someone who does Rick wrong.

Daryl jolts awake. The brightness of the moon is overhead, still visible through the nylon fabric of the tent. He is aware he is back in his body—aware of Carol snoozing somewhere behind him, but face to face with Rick, who in the dim light, is asleep. Daryl stares for a moment, the dream making itself apparent to him as a dream, yet clinging like wisps of smoke to his ears and his eyes. He runs his own hand over his ribcage, feels it like the movements of a hand foreign to him, like the hand that had pulled him closer.

When he sweeps his gaze back to Rick, the other man’s eyes are open and indeterminate. They hold each other’s gaze like this as the minutes slither by, as if camouflaged into the thin air around them. Rick does not move except for his shallow, even breaths that shift his jacket across his chest. His eyes, usually bright, are shadowed and hidden. Daryl cannot be sure what is going on behind them, as Rick can be imperceptible when he wants to be. The question is, why does he want to be?

Daryl shifts his arm, not realizing that it had fallen asleep underneath him. His fingers shoot with pins and needles and he grimaces slightly at the sensation, forcing his eyes from Rick’s. When he returns them moments later, Rick’s breath is slow and soft, and those eyes have fallen closed. Had they even been open, or was that just another dream?

Only able to sleep fitfully, Daryl is the first one awake in the pre-dawn light. He quietly collects what he can from their camp to load back into the boot of the car. An hour later, as he’s lowering the deer meat down from the trees, he is explaining to a bedraggled, coffee-slurping Carol the mechanics of adding pickling salt and brine to the rest of the meat, turning it almost into a jerky, before Rick exits the tent.

Daryl is silent as the man spots them in the distance and walks over, wincing slightly against the morning sun’s light. Carol, knowing how much had been drank from the remnants of the whisky bottle, passes her coffee to Rick with a sympathetic smile.

“Had fun last night?” she asks rhetorically. The edge of Rick’s mouth turns up in a pained expression and he brings the cup to his lips to gingerly drink. Daryl swallows involuntarily as that Adam’s apple bobs up and down in the stubbled throat.

“Daryl was just saying we can put salt on the meat,” Carol says to Rick. “That it’ll make it last for a few weeks more.”

Rick nods, his eyes flashing to Daryl’s. Daryl finds it difficult to hold the gaze.

The other man lowers the coffee cup from his mouth, swings his arm out to grasp Daryl’s shoulder. The gesture is warm, friendly. “Thanks, brother. We’ll really need it a few weeks from now.”

The hand leaves his shoulder abruptly and Daryl just nods, grunts. Rick’s mouth turns up into a small smile, only visible to Daryl because it is halfway blocked by the coffee cup he is raising back up to his lips. This image imprints itself in Daryl’s mind—the tilt of Rick’s head, the dark curls collecting the sunlight, the roguish tint turning up the corners of those fine features. Then the picture is gone, as Rick switches his gaze back over to Carol.

“We should get goin’,” Rick decides. “Any longer and someone’s bound to come lookin’ for our bodies.”

Daryl breathes in deeply, one last lungful of forest, as they work together to disassemble the tent, fold blankets, take down the walker fence. They are on the road back before Daryl can see the open sky stretch out above them, unimpeded by the forest canopy. Light blue surrounds the curve of the sky’s horizon, and across this edge of the world, a shadow flanks the sun: the pale specter of the mourning moon.


	3. The Farm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-change complications pour into the present, and Rick finds it hard to reconcile who he was with who he needs to be. Meanwhile, Carol teaches Daryl how to heal his wounds. Pre-canon, mixed with some scenes taking place during S02E12 ~ S02E13.

All Rick can hear when he looks at Shane’s bruised face is a slight tinnitus hum and the echo of his fist hitting flesh. If it were the old days, the joke would have been as follows— _You should see the other guy._ Because Rick, catching a reflection of himself in the pond as he bends to scoop water onto the back of his neck, hardly looks touched. Just a hairline cut against his eyebrow, and cheekbone, bright red. Not the total socket bruise he laid into Shane with fury long left latent, and a deep cut caused by his wedding band. However, he doesn’t really find this funny. He hasn’t found anything funny for a while.

“What about patrols?” Andrea is asking him, her ponytail swinging with her proactive movements.

“Let’s get this area locked down first,” Rick decides. “After that, Shane’ll assign shifts while me and Daryl take Randall offsite and cut him loose.”

Rick knows his squint is hard, and that he has been staring at Shane this whole time—can see the obstinacy in the other’s dark gaze. But he turns away, slowly, having said his piece, as there are so many other things to do. But that is when Shane speaks.

“We’re back to that now?”

Rick sighs as he turns, smiling sardonically, just a flash of his teeth like a predator would. “Right plan first time around. Poorly executed.”

“That’s a slight understatement,” Shane drawls.

Rick takes a few side steps toward him, making his body a smaller target, getting ready for another fight. “You don’t agree, but this is what’s happenin’. Swallow it,” he growls. “Move on.”

“You know that Dale’s death and that prisoner—that’s two separate things, right?”

Rick looks at him with some incredulity. The other man is far off base, or maybe too close to home: Either way, irrelevant when the words are attempting to rail against his decree.

“You wanna take Daryl as your wingman?” Shane scoffs, tilts his head. “Be my guest.”

“Thank you.”

“You got it.”

They cannot even stand to look at each other. The words are all sarcasm, and thinly veiled violence.

On the wraparound porch of the farmhouse, Rick is explaining to Daryl exactly how they will handle the Randall situation. He has a map spread out in front of them, Daryl leaning lackadaisically against the railing as he listens to Rick’s words. A cool breeze blows by, stirring the soft hairs around Daryl’s ears, and Rick clears his throat.

“So, you good with all that?”

Daryl shrugs. The other man is all fluid motion: Rick has hardly seen him take a misstep, make something, some bow nock or gun shot, seem awkward. His body possess the space he is in, almost warps the air around it. It is something to be near him and his ease—almost infectious, it is.

“I don’t see us tradin’ haymakers on the side of the road,” Daryl jokes darkly. “Nobody’d win that fight.”

Rick meets that blue eyed gaze with some subdued confusion. He wonders, is Daryl implying that he’s an equal match, or the opposite?

The approaching car that Rick knows holds Shane inside distracts him, momentarily, taking his eyes from Daryl and turning them toward the laneway.

“That thing you did last night,” Rick starts, planting his eyes back on Daryl.

Daryl just squints. “Ain’t no reason you should do all the heavy liftin’.”

Rick nods, throwing his gaze back at the car, which Shane is now putting into park. He knows that Daryl’s eyes are on him, still, looking up. Then the marksman is looking over his shoulder at Shane.

“I’m gonna take a piss,” he says roughly as Shane approaches, effectively excusing himself. Rick watches him go, swinging deftly away from the house by holding onto a support beam, flinging his feet over the four stairs up to the porch, then watches Shane approach.

“Hey, you seen Carl at all?”

Rick tenses his jaw. “He’s inside with his mother.”

“Look—I think he wants to talk to his father.”

Rick feels the aggression boiling inside of him. He feels brutal, like someone too long on the edge of society. It doesn’t make him feel strong, capable—it just makes him feel weak, perpetuating the cycle.

“Well, I need this Randall thing done already,” Rick spits, all venom.

Shane’s face goes soft. In the shadows, against the oncoming noon sun, Rick thinks he can see the face of a younger Shane. A Shane years-gone.

“Man, I'm telling you that needs to wait.”

Rick wants to jump out of his skin, wants to hear his fist hitting flesh again. There isn’t time, isn’t energy for these petty struggles.

“It’s my call,” he manages, staring Shane down. That is when he sees a shift across his face, from softness to ire. To wanting to hurt him, too.

“How about I ride out with Daryl?” That voice starts even enough. It almost sounds like a suggestion that is meant to help Rick, to portion some things away from his overloaded plate. “Good for us to spend a little time together.”

But Rick can sense it, that the other man is just a tendon away from starting something, lips curling into a slow smirk. He doesn’t like the way Shane is looking at him.

“Nah,” he replies with an easy violence, overt now. “I need you here.”

But Shane’s small smirk only deepens. Rick feels exposed, because he still doesn’t know why—that upon Daryl walking past, upon Daryl bending gently to cup a handful of water from the stream, bring it to his lips, Rick feels his body tense like a lightning rod struck. With each glance the other man throws his way, it is like this, somehow like this. An animal reflex, unexplainable. All he knows is that Shane knows, now, has seen right through him like he always could.

They are alone, the two of them, when Shane gets up enough balls to mention it again. Daryl has just left on his bike, saying he is going hunting because he’s already caught all the squirrels close by. Rick lets his curious eyes take in his figure as it retreats, outlining the thighs wrapped around the gas tank, the hands held tight to the grips. Only thing is, he had not been aware of Shane looming somewhere to his right, staring as he had stared. He’s alerted to the other’s presence by a sharp, barking laugh.

“You sure were quick to find another ass, hm?” Shane states, cajoling him. “Lori should’ve been quieter. You like that silent type, like how I was when we first met.”

Rick scowls at the statement, at being called out. He thinks about Shane, quickly, the last time anything had happened. His and Lori’s wedding. Shane there, dressed to the nines as the best man. He had tried to kiss Rick in his inebriated state and Rick, not knowing what to do, had let it happen. Their tongues grappling at some shadow of lust, the drinks, and suits, and forbidding culminating into something that probably would not have happened, otherwise. At least, Rick knew he would not have done, otherwise.

“I’ve never thought,” Rick calls, his voice strong, “you’d come after the past like this. Thought you’d buried that bone, dog.” He hopes it will back the other man down, make Shane regard this emotional guerilla warfare for what it is, exactly. There is a beat, and then two, and then three.

“What do you expect, Rick? Okay, so, I haven’t let it go,” Shane retorts. He throws his arm out, gesturing. “But how perfect is this? We could try it again. You, me, Lori. All three of us.”

Everything shifts, suddenly, to the right. Rick is shaking his head before he realizes it, taking a few steps toward the other man. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t aware how threatening of a figure he cuts, but that is what Shane understands. This is what Rick thinks, anyway, put at odds with the other man like this.

“That’s in the past,” Rick stresses. “How many ways I gotta say that to you before you get it?”

Shane, all angles and reflected light upon the sharpness of his cheekbones, twice-broken nose bridge, steals forward unexpectedly. He vaults over the railing of the porch, drops with a heavy thump to the grass. He matches Rick’s threat inch for inch.

“So this… this shit? Means nothin’ to you, no more?”

Rick finds himself unable to swallow, his shoulders tensed. He has no idea where the beginning of this thread he’s holding on to starts. He doesn’t know what kind of middle he is going to get to this story, already approaching its ending.

“It doesn’t have to be this way, Shane,” Rick growls, daring to move toward the other man—his partner, here, at the end of the world. He reaches his tapered fingertips out, almost able to touch him. “You know that it’s never had to be like this.”

His words are hard, but they fall on deaf ears. The man across from him now brandishes his arm like a weapon, its hard lines a dark threat, and jabs into the empty air between them. Rick reflexively reaches for his gun before drawing away just as quickly, holding his palms up, empty, at his chest.

“What we done for you—Lori and me—You really forgotten it all?”

This knocks the other man back a pace. Rick knows that behind those clouded eyes an image, a certain scenery plays out—repeats. Rick, taking Shane’s mouth in front of a prone Lori, her four-months pregnant belly only a slight hill, imperceptible, burgeoning from her hipbones. Just maps of skin between the three of them, consecrated by tongues and cum on what would be Rick and Lori’s marital bed.

…

Rick forgets how it came about, in the first place. Lori, his girlfriend, two months pregnant and voracious, may have been the one to suggest inviting another into their bed. She had known about Rick’s tastes, of course, known he had had experiences beyond even her own. The idea never sat right with her until it grew like a seed within her head, the hormones of her first pregnancy watering it daily.

That, or maybe it had been Rick to bring it up, first. One night, wine drunk, telling her unabashedly about his journey to accept his deviances and stop calling them that. To treat them like they were—proclivities, nothing more, and nothing less. Waking up with a headache, but the lingering notion that they had shared a laugh about it and understood one another. That it was now out there, in the air between them, for better or for worse.

Either way, Lori had assented to Rick’s suggestion of Shane, her face some vestige of hardness, but nonetheless acclimating. She was about four months pregnant before the other man came over for dinner that first night. There had been hundreds of dinners before this one, but not exactly like this one. Rick could tell it excited Lori to flirt openly, her fingers trailing small touches as plates were passed, beer poured. How her eyes sparkled just a bit more with each smile, each joke. Rick thought she was beautiful like this—entranced by her soft glow. And Shane, sitting across from him, roguish and lifting a bottle to his lips like a present waiting to be unwrapped.

All and all, Rick had thought it was one of their better dinners.

Shane took a swig of beer over the sink, tilting his jaw up, knuckles covered in suds, before he went back to scrubbing at the pan underneath the surface of the water. Rick, walking in on this scene, strode over and slid his palm onto the other man’s lower back.

“You don’t gotta do that,” he murmured with a bit of a laugh in his throat. “C’mon. Leave it.”

Shane was unsettled by the touch, Rick could tell. Excited but also nervous, these two emotions inseparable and part of a bigger whole. Shane brought his washing to an unsteady stop, but did not withdraw his hands from the water. Rick pressed his palm up the length of the other man’s spine, grazing the thin cotton of his t-shirt, holding gently at the nape of his neck. His fingers fidgeted with the silver chain there.

“You still want this?” he asked, voice soft. Shane’s gaze met his from the corner of his eyes, then that face was turning toward him.

“Yeah,” Shane admitted, voice hitched, with a slight nod. “I do—just—Rick.” He seemed unable to continue, unable to bring into words what was passing through his mind.

“It’s been a long time since you were this quiet,” Rick chuckled, voice still low. He rubbed his thumb into the short hairs at the base of Shane’s buzzcut, leaning closer. “It’s nostalgic, you gettin’ all speechless.”

Shane was silent, so Rick stole forward, pressed his lips against the shell of Shane’s ear. The small diamond stud on the lobe there was cool on his skin. The other man had nuzzled into the touch, becoming bolder, and eventually that mouth had found his again. A slight moan vibrated through Shane’s throat before he reached his hands out, soaking wet and sudsy, to push Rick up against the hard edge of the counter and press animalistically into his crotch, the growing hardness there. Rick recalled the heat of Shane’s mouth, the roughness of his movements. It was familiar, safe, and stirring.

By the time the two men parted, they were both breathing heavily. Shane tilted his forehead against Rick’s then took a few steps back, away, his hands coming up to rest on his hips.

“I ain’t one for all that sissy shit,” Shane started. “But this is gonna mean something to me. You have to know that.”

Rick nodded.

“With Lori, too, like—” Shane took a deep breath in. “You’re my best friends, or I wouldn’t even consider—shit. You’re just both fuckin’—I don’t wanna fuck this up.”

Rick had laughed softly at this little speech. “Shut up,” he murmured, taking Shane’s arm and pulling him away from the sink, toward the staircase. “Lori’s waitin’.”

She was perched expectantly on the coverlet of the bed, wearing nothing but a plum-colored bodysuit of satin and lace. Shane entered the room with hesitancy at his heels, throwing a glance at Rick behind him, asking for permission to look at her bared body even though it was displayed like a pastry shop window before him.

“You’re so beautiful, baby,” Rick told her, knowing it would elicit a smile. He looked to Shane, who agreed with a quiet clearing of his throat, his eyes drinking her in. Lori’s smile deepened.

“Shane’s feelin’ shy,” Rick told her. “But he kissed me, downstairs.”

Lori laughed lightly, reaching out to him. Rick strode over, bending down to press his lips onto hers.

“Mmm,” she hummed. “I can taste it.”

Rick buried his mouth past her hanging, fire-flecked hair, laving wetly at the crux of her neck as he began to unbutton his shirt. She sighed at his touch, extending her other arm to beckon Shane closer.

“Do you want to kiss me, too, Shane?”

Lori had run her dark eyes over Shane’s angles, his face set with its jaw jumping, trying hard to stay with the present but obviously having trouble.

“You know, I’ve always liked you,” she admits with a smile. She tried to make light of it for his sake, and this kindness touched Shane deeply. It was a moment that he would never forget.

Rick watched Shane take his girlfriend’s mouth greedily, watched a tongue slip past the flesh meeting there. Is that what he looked like, kissing him? This thought alone was enough to make Rick’s cock twitch. He had turned to Shane, who was now openly accepting their touches, his eyes lidded with desire. He brought Shane’s jaw closer with the gentle cup of his palm, trying to coax out the animal that he knew dwelled beneath. Lori had looked on, watching their tongues intertwine after all this time, make good on their twenty-something bodies’ desire.

Then, after all three of them were spent and sated, Shane’s closeness and warmth had once again ignited something in Rick. After all the days out on patrol, spending so much time together, Shane had never let the spark for Rick leave his eyes. And Rick, stabbing in the dark of his long-unexplored psyche, realized he had never let the spark leave for Shane. After all, he thought, sitting with himself in the darkness, his limbs tangled in both Shane’s and Lori’s before sleep overcame him: He loved the other man, too.

However, this realization made monogamy impossible, and Lori’s short-lived appetite vanished sometime after she delivered Carl. Despite a handful more nights like the one they had shared with Shane, Lori hadn’t been able to grapple with what Rick’s desire for polyamory meant in the long run. Would there be others? Would she be included? What if there were other women? What if it was not just Shane? Shane who liked her, yes, and liked fucking her, but with whom she did not share the same intimacy that he and Rick shared?

One night, after weeks of arguments and tears borne from this fear, Lori had given Rick an ultimatum. Marriage, matrimony—monogamy—or she was leaving. Carl asleep, barely one year old, in the next room. And Rick made his choice.

Because he and Shane hadn’t promised each other forever, hadn’t been built for it, no matter what his 29-year-old brain had told him. And the closer he came to normalcy and domesticity with Lori, the more he saw Carl grow up, Rick knew. Even if it wasn’t marital bliss for some of it, for big parts of it. Rick tried to do right—swallowed that part of himself whole. And Shane, Shane got shut out.

“What?” Shane had challenged, once, after Rick had turned away from his mouth, taken the brash hand from the crotch of his jeans in the locker room at work. “You thought I’d just back off, forget it all? What was that at your wedding, huh? Nothin’? Fuck you, Rick.”

Rick felt his eyes blaze into the other man’s. He had slammed his locker shut and stalked off without a word. It almost came to him asking to be reassigned, Lori not helping matters much with her suspicious eyes when asking about his day, and the way she would drop by the precinct unannounced, ‘just because.’

“I can’t visit my husband at work?” she had asked, emphasizing that hard-won word, her eyes lingering on Shane at his desk on the opposite side of the room.

Then, as these things do, the pressure let up over time. Lori hesitantly trusted him, again, and devoted her attention devoutly toward raising Carl. Then Shane started speaking to Rick about the women he’d take to his bed over the weekends, his narratives bawdy, bordering on the explicit. This girl from that bar and her vacuum throat, this girl from that shooting range and the birthmark on her right ass cheek. Rick had thought it was a better alternative, listening to these stories, than having to give up his relationship with the other man completely. After all, they were friends before—they could be friends again. Right?

…

“Of course I haven’t forgotten,” Shane fires back. “Haven’t forgotten how you both threw me aside, and how you’re both throwin’ me aside again.”

They are dangerously close to a brawl, Rick knows. Shane waiting for a good enough excuse to fight, half out of his anger toward them, this past repeating itself, and half because of his unslaked lust.

“I’m not throwin’ you aside, Shane,” Rick bites, face screwed up in disbelief. “That time’s just passed. It can’t be like that, again. Not after all this shit you’re pullin’.”

“Then—then Lori, you have to know she’s the one doin’ this.”

Rick doesn’t dare turn his back on the other man. “Lori’s her own person. Don’t mistake what she’s done with whatever kinda peace I’m trying to make here.” Rick chews at his lip, considering leaving it at that, but then continues. “No—you know what? You two decided to do this. You tried gettin’ me out of Atlanta, okay. You left me, fine. You thought I was as good as dead, and that was probably true. But you two decided to do this, so you don’t get to cry that I’m still here, and she’s still choosing me. That we’re choosing each other.” Rick pushes Shane back with the flat of his palm, a warning. “You lied, so you deal with losin’ what was based on that lie.” Rick throws his hands up. “Y’know what pisses me off most? That you’re so much better than all’a this, Shane. Just stop it.”

An unfamiliar coldness creeps over Shane’s features. The other man walks toward Rick with nothing but his fists. Rick almost doesn’t recognize him, his face, the look in those eyes foreign and malevolent.

“You’re right, Rick. I am better than this.” Shane laughs, a cool and humorless thing. “You ain’t never the bad guy, hm? You’re never the bad guy. It’s always some other son of a bitch.”

Rick thinks that Shane will grab him, within a foot of him now, but the other man just pushes by him, knocking into his shoulder, making a path back up to the porch steps. Rick watches him go, his anger still roiling beneath his ribcage.

Rick cannot wipe away the image of Shane’s black blood steaming, hot, against the night air. Cannot seem to stop hearing his own cries out into the nothingness on that forest ridge. He thinks he cannot hold himself together long enough to remotely feel like he can trust again. Lori and Shane—the two people closest to him in the world—have both betrayed him in unnumbered ways. They have both broken that unspoken promise. And he has let its breaking break him.

…

Brokenness is something with which Daryl Dixon is intimately acquainted. Why would he strike out at Carol, innocent Carol, for the things she had no control over, otherwise? Her hurts, cradled into her own chest like soft spots being cared for—so unfamiliar and unlike the long-infected sores Daryl keeps picking at, letting fester.

Carol hadn’t looked over Sofia for a minute, two minutes at most. It was an easy excuse that allowed Daryl to wrap himself up in his perpetual pain, insulate himself, to make the flayed flesh of someone else nearby his cocoon.

Then, the most miraculous thing happened. Carol, toughening, survived his cuts. Carol taught him how to stop being so wary that he numbed himself to the point of never feeling. That pushing people away just isn’t a sustainable way of life. With Merle, and the way he and Daryl had lived, it might have worked. But when had he ever lashed out against, or stood up to, Merle? The very real fear of retribution had always been too much. Instead, it was always others—the ones who met his gaze across a dim bar or trailer park campfire when he had been muzzy, lost in the bottom of some bottle, and finally let down his defenses. And they loved him. They loved him as soon as they saw him and how gentle his eyes could be. But he never let it progress beyond that. As soon as he felt those feelers inching toward him, he would pull the knife and cut. He would end it. Because he didn’t deserve it? Because he didn’t know how to keep it without it killing him.

But, Carol. Carol’s friendship. Carol flinching at his anger but not backing away. He had never laid a hand on a woman, because that wasn’t who he was. But she had known men who did, and so it was the first time he had seen someone get close enough to him to react to his anger in this way. It made all his behaviors real and consequential, all his hubris and bravado draining out of him at the sight of that one simple shift of fear across her fine, determined features.

So he had let her in, and thrown the proverbial knife into the river.

She taught him how nice it feels when someone sees all your shit and still sticks around. How it makes one not want to be so shitty, anymore. Makes him want to choose the right option the first time around, and not think there was nothing he could have done about it when it ultimately fails. Makes him want to try. All for the friendship, the bond, that they shared.

That is why, when Lori begs him a second time, “Would you please get back out there and find Rick and Shane, and find out what on earth is going on?” he immediately responds with a nod. He demurs to Lori’s desperate hands, lowers his eyes, nods.

“You got it.”

And he is blessed with the sweet noon sun on his shoulders as he and Carol peel down the highway pavement after everything they have known for the past month goes up in flames. Still alive. And because of this, he is able to meet eyes, clasp hands with Rick once more.

“Keep off the main roads,” Daryl offers as a suggestion, facing the reunited group, but it comes out as a decided-upon truth. Rick only stares at him, mouth closed, and does not dispute this. Instead, there is something in those eyes like relief, like a shadow of trust. So he continues, “Bigger the roads, more walkers’ll be there. Like this asshole.” He draws his bow, aiming. “I got him.”

After, Daryl meets Rick’s long stare, pulling the arrow he had fletched from the walker’s skull. Rick’s jaw jumps, seemingly mulling something around between his teeth. The other man is on the verge of saying something, and Daryl flicks his eyes from that mouth to those eyes, then that mouth again, before looking away, setting his sights on where the grey highway meets the horizon.

He leads the convoy out of the county and into another place altogether. Riding for three hours before Rick’s covered truck almost gives out. Conveniently, it is near somewhere. A place where they can rest.

But, for better or for worse, Rick has his sights set a little higher.

Daryl pulls his bike into a stuttered stop at the beck of Rick’s honking horn, feeling Carol grab onto him as he leans it against his right foot. “You out?” he asks toward Rick’s advancing figure.

Rick replies, “Running on fumes.”

The others have piled out of the cars, coming to join them as Daryl shoots wary glances around the area. He doesn’t like how open it is—he wouldn’t like it if it were closed off, either.

Maggie starts, “We can’t stay here.”

“We can’t all fit in one car,” Glenn counters.

Rick looks around, his hands at his hips. “We’ll have to make a run for some gas in the morning.”

“Spend the night here?” Carol asks, like she can’t believe it. Daryl cannot blame her.

From Lori’s side, Carl has started shivering against the mid-50 degree fall day. Daryl thinks that the cool is not the only thing on the boy’s mind, but rather prolonged fear—adrenaline—shock.

“We’ll build a fire, yeah?” Lori confirms to her son, looking to Rick.

Rick begins to strip himself of his canvas jacket, putting it around Carl’s shoulders.

“You go out lookin’ for firewood,” Daryl starts, “stay close. Only got so many arrows.” He turns to Rick. “How you doing on ammo?”

“Not enough,” comes Rick’s quick reply.

Maggie’s face is a picture of dread. “We can’t just sit here with our asses hanging out.”

This is when Hershel steps forward, his usually-collected white hair sticking out in all directions from the crown of his head.

“Watch your mouth,” the man tells his eldest before turning to face the group. “Everyone stop panicking, and listen to Rick.”

Daryl is looking into the middle distance. He notices when Rick follows his eyes.

“All right,” the other man speaks, “we’ll set up a perimeter. In the morning we’ll find gas and some supplies. We’ll keep pushing on.”

The group balks at this suggestion. Rick continues, “I know it looks bad. We’ve all been through hell and worse but at least _we found_ _each other_.” The last words are stressed, and signal toward some sort of continuity. Some sort of reconciliation, some common ground.

Rick’s eyes are firmly held on Glenn’s. Daryl watches the memory that plays out underneath them: the tank, Atlanta. The walkie and the military radio channel. Then those blue eyes slide to his own.

“We’ll find shelter somewhere. There’s gotta be a place.”

But Glenn demurs. “Rick, look around. There’s walkers everywhere. They’re—migrating or something.”

Rick cannot seem to hear. “There’s gotta be a place, not just where we hole up, but where we fortify,” he gestures firmly toward the pavement, his gun still held in his hand, before continuing, “hunker down, pull ourselves together.” Those blue eyes are searching the empty air for some kind of solace. “Build a life for each other.” Daryl sees that he is getting angry at his own hope, or maybe the circumstances. “I know it’s out there. We just have to find it,” he bites, finally.

Lori’s face splits with the fear it holds, frozen into something like terror. She looks at Rick like a stranger.

And Hershel’s unlearning, all his unlearning, is pooling around him like a sweater come undone. Yet he is standing there, erudite, a rifle slung in his arms. “We won’t make that mistake again.”

Rick nods. “We’ll make camp tonight, over there. Get on the road at the break of day.”

Daryl bites his cheek, begins to take a step forward. But Carol is pulling him back, hissing.

“Does this feel right to you?”

Daryl cannot respond before Beth is saying, “What if walkers come through?” Her diminutive frame a willow in her father’s shadow. “Or another group like Randall’s?”

Daryl clears his throat. “You know I found Randall, right?” He looks from Beth to Rick to the others, face by face. “He had turned, but he wasn’t bit.”

Rick’s eyes flash away from his, and it is then that Daryl knows. Daryl knows but he does not want to accept it of his own volition. He wants to hear it from Rick, like the others want to hear it from Rick, regardless of if they have figured it out or not. They look to Rick like Daryl looks to him, waiting.

Beth eventually ventures, “How’s that possible?”

Lori has also turned to Rick. “What the hell happened?”

Daryl steps forward, recalling the truth that his tracking had uncovered. “Shane killed Randall,” he says, voice unwavering. “Just like he always wanted to.”

This buys Rick a few seconds, and Daryl knows they are needed. It isn’t long before Lori is asking Rick, “And then the herd got Shane?”

Rick doesn’t respond, his mouth a line. He runs his eyes over Daryl’s torso, up to Daryl’s eyes. The look acknowledges everything Daryl holds in his mouth, tucked into the cheek, kept secret. He is thinking about the waste that laid itself out against that forest ridge, but Rick’s gaze is not completely transparent, so something remains hidden from him, unspoken, buried deep.

Then the man unburies it. “We’re all infected.”

The shock settles over the group.

“And you never said anything?” Carol asks with some malevolence in the tone.

“Would it have made a difference?” Rick fires back.

“So you knew this whole time?” Glenn confirms, in a state of disbelief.

Rick starts to backpedal. “How could I have known for sure? You saw how crazy that mother—”

But it is not enough. Glenn’s voice is low but shaking with anger as he responds, definitive, “That is not your call. Okay? When I found out about the walkers in the barn, I told. For the good of everyone.”

Rick’s face screws up into a sardonic smile. “I thought it best if people didn’t know.”

His eyes have glazed over, hardened, set. They seem to say, _And this is why_. Daryl shifts his crossbow against his chest, finding the truth of this blooming slowly inside of him. He doesn’t blame Rick as he sees, apparent, the blame on the faces of the others. Those ice eyes flash to his for a second and he meets them, gaze softened by understanding.

Rick stalks off, and Daryl bends to reload his bow. He watches as wife follows man, sees Lori wrap her thin arms around Rick from behind in a comforting gesture. She meets Daryl’s eyes distractedly, across all this distance, pushing the hair back from her face. Daryl holds the gaze, then moves away—moves toward the trunk of the SUV. Then he sees Lori push away Rick’s advances, his arms. And then, suddenly, she is stalking away. She has a look on her face like something rabid, something wronged. He sees the truth of Shane over both of their faces. One, betrayed. The other, differently betrayed.

Daryl knows he is witnessing a moment that will echo out into the days and weeks to come. If they last that long. Only if they last that long.

Dale’s voice rings in his ears: _This group is broken._

But, Daryl knows that you have to bleed out the infection before the wound will heal.


End file.
